Women, We Are: Melissa Traister

By: Brook

I talk with Melissa about her poem "Women, We Are", solidarity and empowerment through art, and feminism! Click below for the full interview.

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Women, We Are by Melissa Traister
for my mother

Sitting at the kitchen table
are two generations of women.
The television is serving up bite-sized stories of female pop culture icons-
body frames thin as a poster board,
eyes wide open like an owl after too much caffeine,
and schedules the length of a peninsula.

My mother puts down her second bowl of oatmeal, and says:
The pressures placed upon
women never seems to change.

I think of all the other women-
living in countries with hills of dirt that unravel like a slinky,
meals of rice and water the hue of a nimbus cloud,
flies on the sides of their mouths like clumps of pepper.

As a member of the second sex, I admit:
The world has always spun this way-
decades of labor for unmentioned wages (free)
hanging
like a pair of breasts without milk.

Then, my spoon drops to the floor.

The throbbing of every woman’s heart
drowned out
by the clang bang echo of a single spoon on kitchen tile-
all in the name of some science god called Gravity.

Unwilling to accept second place, I say:
Women all over the world
must keep telling their stories that
flow on and on like the Rio Grande.

In the name of equality, my mother replies:
Each time you write a poem,
a dam holding back the
body of women in the world is reversed;
foam rising to the top frothing as courage.