Joyce Fairbrother

Joyce Fairbrother reports: I am a poet and teacher dividing my

time between Orono, Maine, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Current projects include Mythologies, a website of my poetry and

"icon/graphy", a visual poetry collaboration with Eric Boutilier-Brown.

She can be reached at joy@umit.maine.edu.

Eric Boutilier-Brown http://www.collideascope.com/empire/ebb

Mythologies http://www.collideascope.com/empire/ebb/myth

icon/graphy http://www.collideascope.com/empire/ebb/icon

Blood Simpled

Jesus

bloody

bleeding in my best underwear

Christ

- - that "time of the month" again?

Worse than paying a bill,

never

get the account settled.

Always surprised,

could eat nails

I am so pissed;

need the iron

anyway. Bitching.

have to go buy "supplies"

biting the heads off

hollow chocolate sales clerks...

Feminine hygiene?

like girls are dirty?

guilt by association,

as if

guys don't have

sweaty smelly bodies,

pits and groins

but that's manly yes

and I like stew.

this is business.

uterus closed for resurfacing

run D&C

menopause take me away

from this copper smell

and I am

the prisoner of gender.

Blood time..

hate everyone..

pms psm msp...msg.

for all I fucking care

Big Jack forgives any sin

but being woman born;

bruise my heel Big Guy?

Bite me, I dare you.

Eve wanted to leave the garden...

she was bored,

couldn't wait to discover the joy

of sex, of being sexed...

couldn't wait to swell and swoon and

generally be biologically determined.

Thanks Big Jack...

what a plan;.

this is my body

bloated with pain

and fashion statements

mutilated to men's vanity

eat this

in remembrance of me

but never in the blood time...

came through it

but don't taste it

you might remember

and be grateful

that it is the tree

bearing the fruit

of the knowledge

of good and evil;

Eve smuggled out a cutting

between her legs.

You only think

it is a clitoris

In the blood time

there is not forgiveness,

there is no welcome

abandon all hope ye who

enter there...

and don't think

you're getting in cheap...

I want blood of my own.

Blood lust.

Blood frenzy.

Bloody pissed off.

Too close

and I will rend

you into blood bits,

spattering

your insipid manhood

like Lorena Bobbit

at the deli...

good deal.

how could I have forgotten

thought I was immune

to the pull

of the red river

rushing, snaking

down my leg,

Blood time and I am hostage

to the life force,

biological pawn,

oh, you're soaking in it.

The henna in my hair

highlights the

curious roselike petals

and I am swollen

with contempt

that I must ransom my life

with..what the fuck

is sanitary about napkins

and invade the space with

an amputated finger tampon.

pull back boys....

thigh smears you look surprised

and I am copper contempt

how did you think

Jesus H. Christ got here

in the blood time

I sacrifice myself

on a gender chain

take me down and sink me

I hate, Irate, I hate

that I am prisoner and

cannot escape

the philosophy of the uterus

not a tracking device or a hotel

just a big muscle with attitude.

I want my own penis

to flip over my shoulder

-yahoo-

and wave all around

I want to dip it

in your blood time and

write my name

on the wall

of your insides.

You know,

sometimes I just don't feel fresh.

July 28, 1996

Joyce Fairbrother