To Live with the Weeds

Wren picked up To Live with the Weeds and had read up to the poem observing that the existence of unicorns enjoy more cultural proof than lesbians do.

To Live with the Weeds by D. A. Clarke is available as a downloadable pdf.

and everywhere unicorns

l.

In the passenger seat of my father's car, passing

through the deliberate ugliness of south los angeles I see

suddenly that I have been mistaken:

there are no lesbians.

There is less sign of our existence here

than there is of unicorns: the unicorn appears

ubiquitous on plastic boxes, expensive posters, t shirts; nowhere

do lesbians appear.

I move irritably in the crowded store,

out of my depth, far from my own lairs and trails;

fear is corked securely in my stomach,

I do not shove people aside and run.

My face congeals beneath their stares, only my peripheral vision

catches heads turning. I imagine whispers,

ponder giggles.

I look at every short-haired woman

eagerly, as sailors they say used to strain their eyes

to the thin blue promise of shore; but disappointed

I count up the necessary feminine articles,

my eyes are evaded.

I see no woman unaltered, undisguised, in all this human variety

no variety; no naked face looks back to mine,

no unvarnished nails scoop up my dollars, no broad behind

strides past me in uncompromising denim.

I see shoes not made to walk in, clothes not made to work in,

women not meant to last.

My hair is buzz-cut to fur; with heavy boots and hips

and face uncamouflaged, with my missing smile

I trail behind my parents, a dancing bear

blinking and confused on its length of familial chain,

shuffling awkwardly through this curious

unfriendly crossfire of eyes.

Trying for defiance I feel my face

assume a familiar grim nonentity. I pretend

to myself that I am a foreigner, a tourist,

entertained by quaint customs, safe in the glass globe of my culture,

just visiting. But

I have no country.

My language is this language, my parents

fade respectably into the human haze, my belief

is bent as iron filings court the magnet. Though I look hopefully

at any two teenage girls together, I remember not to look.

Is it alarm I read in their acceptable faces, is it disgust?

Ugly, I read in their faces, and the years of my youth

repeat it bitterly to me, ugly.

I cling to the dialect

of my own, my nonexistent country:

handsome, says my lover. My people, 1 tell myself,

say butch. Mot ugly. My people,

I tell myself, reaching for an untaught history,

for the simple dignity of a foreigner in this place.

21Somewhere in LA tonight are women together without men

(but you'd never know it);

I pass the bright magical images of rock heroes,

little dragons glitter under glass at the jewellery counter,

Santa Claus beams at me from dll sides and the god of the Christians

proclaims his pain from pendants, from lacquered

laminate clock faces; and everywhere unicorns.

So many pictures and none of lesbians.

2.

My country is invisible as the hidden landscapes

under leaves, wide plains of moss across a stump,

towering cliffs of a crumbled log, massive cumulus of blown foam,

neon cities of wet web slung between twigs, the vast sky

reflected in common puddles, the artistry of each

individual pebble.

My country is concealed

in its minute details, lesbian beauty hidden

somewhere in this jumble of stucco and cement,

revealed only to a special lens.

In individual houses, in obscure restaurants,

at unlisted numbers, behind mailboxes bearing only initials,

in the back rooms where customers won't have to look at us,

my people are lurking unnoticed as the perfection

of the plain flowers that grow along the freeway.

Under disguises so clever even we can't see through them

my people are running scared

laying low.

My country shimmers into existence at the magic

level meeting of eyes across a room, at a bold or shy

grin, a nod, the flash of a pinkie ring, the sight

of some arcane talisman.

My country rises around me when something about two women

shopping together, sitting together, the quiet undistracted connection

between them, conjures ancient realms, unproven warriors, the lost lands:

we have been homesick ail our lives.

Two Barbies in suggestive poses, the mythic lesbians of centerfolds

inhabit men's eyes. I mourn my country

defoliated monthly on their newsstands,

vanishing in the dust under their loud tires,

evaporating in the killing radiation

of ten million TV sets tuned to their truths.

3.

My country

fades around me. In this my childhood room

I find books of dragons, books of monsters,

pictures of angels and devils and gods

and none of lesbians.

In the eyes of my younger self as they look

coolly from the projection screen, at my mother's lens, out of time,

I see exile.

Somewhere in LA tonight are women together

in love or struggle, but first in each other's lives

(but you'd never know it); like Peter Pan and Wendy

I mutter to myself tonight,

‘I do believe in lesbians

'I do believe in lesbians. . . .’ while headlights search my ceiling.

This whole cluttered, desolate shore of my past 1 have walked again

looking for a bit of wood bearing the name of some ship,

some obscure script curled tight in the dim heart of a bottle,

for the footprints of something once half-seen, for evidence.

And in the face of failure and of long knowledge

well-taught, that there are no lesbians;

that what I am is different, yes, but nameless;

  that I have no country; in the teeth of the evidence

I do, I do, I do believe in lesbians.

Even in los angeles, in my old room,

in my father's car,

in the bathroom mirror.

While headlights hunt my ceiling I lie still

working magic; I conjure Whlleaway

and Lesbos and Valencia Street, I build my country

brick by brick out of thin air, create myself

and all my untaught history, I conjure my lover

and our friends. With no passport,

no license, no documents and no evidence, in desperate alchemy

I stir stale lies and dusty griefs,

transmute them to defiance.

My country endures or falls by such unnatural acts

of faith.

1984