When Choosing Among Little Black Dresses

Some of my concerns run deeper than others. For instance, right now I am contemplating which of three black dresses to wear. It's a consideration of body-consciousness, sparkle or bare shoulders. You see, I'm getting ready to ring in the new year and my girls and I have decided to glam it up this round.

In truth, such musings reflect deeper explorations in feminism, liberation and freedom of expression. I have had the fortune (and along with it the responsibility) of always being able to choose for myself.  

On the brink of a new year in which this millennium becomes a teen-ager, many other women are living in societies which continue to suppress their voice and impede their rights. There still are women who can't decide what to wear, which school to go to, which bus to take. 

Well aware of this, my girls and don't take any of these freedoms for granted. We give voice and fight and platform to the many women who don't have the good fortune we have.

We wear our stilettos with pride, we choose our black dresses with mindfulness and we move forward into 2013 we welcome the sunrise of better days for women everywhere. Happy New Year, you look gorgeous!

War Poem (August 23rd Revision)

Sadly this is a poem that continues to unravel, and those of us with voice and rage and open hearts must keep the story front and center. Stronger and stronger, our voices togeher.

There’s a war going on just underneath my skin

a quiet, harrowing war of the unspeakable

a war unsought. Never lost, never won.

A mole under my left eye, eternal tear

weeping for a flock of American soldiers

who killed all the husbands but spared my skin.

The space between my legs burns of

blunt blades, pointed fingers, savage laws of 

men in loin cloths, sacred robes and tailored suits. 

Under my knee, a gash from the weary fall of grandmothers

whose solider husbands marched to their deaths leaving

widows and orphans to see their liberation from the Japanese

Dynasties of fabric seeking the perfect lotus

feet bend my arches into breaking, making

each step excruciating.

On my left cheek, a disapproving brother’s signature

marked in acid, proud announcement to the world

little sister is a dirty girl not worthy of dowry.

Beneath my breasts, lungs damaged in the fall

down the well in the woods when fathers

wanted only Chinese baby boys.

A thousand bastard mongrel babies fathered by friars

cysts in my left ovary now severed by a doctor

marking forever the female parts of my childless body.

The cries trapped in the voiceless throats 

Of my kin forced into sex slavery in Syria

form a lump on my forearm, my wartime purple heart.

My left pinky finger bends at at point 

where the blade barely missed the lawbreaking 

painted nails offending Taliban sensibility.

In the dead of night, even today you still hear, “Magdalene, 

Asking for It, Virgin, Puta, Illegitimate Rape Victim,

Slut." There, just there. There's a war going on.