extracted text

Property of the Center

ENCODINGS

VOLUME ONE

NUMBER TWO

ENCODINGS

Published randomly, twice a year. Editorial and
subscription offices: Liaud: A Women's Press, P.O.
Box 6793, Houston, TX 77265-6793.
Copyright © 1990 by Liaud: A Women's Press. All
rights reserved. Subscription rate: $9.00 per year,
$4.50 single copy. Send self-addressed stamped
envelope for submission guidelines.

Cover Photograph: No. XIV, from the series
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
by Sharon Stewart

ENCODINGS
A Feminist Literary Journal
Volume 1, Number 2

PUBLISHERS:
Liaud: A Women's Press

CO-EDITORS
Audrey Yates Crawford
M. Laurita (Lita) Fike

REVIEWERS
Ibis Gomez-Vega
Gretchen Mieszkowski
M. Bernadette Ryan
Jacquelyn Shawh

This is the second issue of ENCODINGS, and the second venture of our
publishing company, Liaud: AWomen's Press.
The establishment of Liaud and ENCODINGS derives from
our recognition of the fascination for language that is
so characteristic of the current period of feminism. Our purpose is to
provide a forum for women's ways of knowing and speaking.

ISSN:1047-403X

TABLE OF CONTENTS
4

CAROL SNYDER

In Praise of Your Body
Getting Married
Galveston
"In the Winter Extra Blankets for the Cold"

9 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVI

10 CAROL SNYDER

Where We Will Go

12 FABIAN WORSHAM

At the Sheraton in Denton, Texas
Imperatives: The Mill
A Lesson in Social Democracy
Guernica: Interior Landscape

16 CATHY STERN

Exhibits

17 SHARON STEWART

Photographs:
"Passage in the Light"
No.XXII
No.XXX
No.XXV
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
No. X

21

MONICA VAUGHAN

24 LESLIE LOPEZ

Unfolding
The New England Poems No. IX
Feet First

28 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVII

29 LESLIE LOPEZ

Hollow Valley
When You Are Away

32 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

IN PRAISE OF YOUR BODY

I would stop by its nice roadside
a good place to pull off, and shade,
the coolest breezes,
and us so hot and dogtired.

II
I look out for your body
like the first sight of the sea,
everybody laughing and scrambling
to get out of their clothes and into it!

III
I might sing a small tune about it
like the wind in the roof vents
turning with a hum, just going around busily
(Do I love you? Do I, Do I)
mindless as a gnat in spring.

4

IV
I would never make a picture of it
because a pencil is only human and
could accidentally erase but I might
lie down warmly all over it like a suntan.

V
Mainly, however, in praise of your body
I would like to say a few words
privately in its ear if it will meet me
somewhere later as soon as it can
and hurry.

Carol Snyder

5

GEmNG MARRIED
I think I will marry you
in a rented rowboat:
we'll stay out all night
until they quit looking for us;
the stars will present themselves
for hours, front and center;
we'll trail our hands in the slow water.
Eventually the stars will call it
a night, clouds of tulle will lift,
we'll be adrift. The bottom
of the boat will knock as though
sleeping dolphins were turning
under it, pulling the grey spread.
And just there at the fish-breaking
edge of morning where a slight
blue band begins low in the sky,
miles and miles and miles from land
I'll take your hand.

Carol Snyder

6

GALVESTON
The sea is noisy; the wind blows
in like a flag in the wind, whipping
this way and that; four o'clock
by the sun making everything pink,
your skin, the sand the color
of healthy flesh. Right in front of us,
double time, the comic drill
of a sandpiper, various figures -families, couples -- considering
something in the sand, at sea,
their words spun round in the spume.
No one sees us sitting in the dunes
behind a fringe of rubbery green.
Digging down you find a buried shoot,
pale green still and alive,
its roots sent deep, its two leaves
resilient under a close cover of powder.
The sun goes lower and redder;
all of this scene has the tone of my love
for you, another meaning not anywhere
here and to which nothing - not the wind
or the time or the roots of the dune weed
can speak because they blow and pass,
although they go deep.

Carol Snyder

7

"AND IN TI-IE WINTER EXTRA BLANKETS FOR THE COLD"
Dearest person to me and last chance
to grow: our garden from the bedroom
window, will what we planted open
before the frost? Not much of fall
is left; the sun is weak now and falters
on and off, the yellow cucumber star
trailing low, the eggplant in suspense
like a hard black grape. So how
in this eccentric place (nothing
much we chose to grow yet all the given
growing) can we expect
a late, a second gain, the flower
without a name we thought was dill
or weed? Still I am expecting
purple or rose or mixed
blessing to suit my matching
need, to show you what can succeed
against the odds, but guessing
too this plot may not apply
and I must instead myself open,
unloosen the clenched years
and tum to you to know
the will to love and be whole.

Carol Snyder

8

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVI. Photograph.
SHARON STEWART

WHERE WE WILL GO
I was just about to fall asleep,
(I must have been standing up to take
such a terrific fall)
keel over into sleep like a dead
drunk with crosses on my eyes
just about to hit the ground dreaming
when the angel of the lord
-- everyone knows which one is the angel
of the lord arrived in his rainbow pterodactyl wings
looking peevish, bumped me, "Hell!"
I said, ''That remains to be seen," said he.
He looked through me like a crystal ball.
"Jesus," I said, but flattery was getting me
nowhere, so I went along. We were en route
to the temporal dump before you could
collect your thoughts or straighten the bed.
I guessed I was just dead
in the water and that much was true,
but I hadn't anticipated he'd pick up you
when there you were drowsy on darvon,
mussed up good, looking beddish, mortalsinnish and cute. Now the two
of us were really in the soup.
''What is the soup du jour?" I asked, but I knew.
We went along like lambs, wooly bright,
because, as we'd said all along, this thing was right.
The pit of hell yawned at this point, full
of the drifting damned, hands
over mouths, punished for earthly disordered nights.

10

Mt. Heaven, the other way, looked energetic
and alert. We blinked some forty winks
or so, and the angel, no slouch,
bustled like a dexie-head around
and about. God arrived, a greenback eye,
"e pluribus unum," He said. "Ho hum" said we
in unison, then slid down slowly the incline
praying "now we lay us down to sleep,
the woods are lovely, dark and deep,"
our voices dwindling, dull and meek,
"we have an appointment we have to keep;
wake us up in about a week... "
The angel vanished, God's eye shut;
Satan snored, and the light went out.

Carol Snyder

11

AT THE SHERATON IN DENTON, TEXAS
Joyously, I've abandoned my life:
the cluttered desk, the piles of untyped notes,
the dirty dishes and maids who refuse to clean them,
the note that says my son has called the principal a dick again.
I've flown away to an ideal universe: a conference
in a distant city. Aloof,! sit in the lobby, reviewing
the program. I converse with bright young feminists,
and we plot together, honing our subversive blades.
I have a queen-size bed in a room all my own
fashionable, in rose and wedgewood, with tasteful prints
on the walls. Atop the dresser, the TV, defunct remnant
of barbarism, stands dark and silent for three days.
In the mornings I shower and order breakfast,
which a handsome young man brings on a tray.
I tip him generously. I cannot stop smiling.
Settled in my armchair, I drink coffee while butter melts
on blueberry muffins. The eggs are done to perfection.
The slant of the sun could not be more perfect.
At night I pull back the richly patterned coverlet;
the sheets, lightly starched, amazingly ironed, are
white as new snow, soft as feathers, delicate as a moth's wing.
I cannot stop smiling. My head sinks into the buoyant pillow,
the mattress meets the arch of my spine, and I remember
a beautiful man who loved me once. If only he could love me
for an hour -- then go away.

Fabian Worsham

12

IMPERATIVES: THE MILL
for Mary Ann Coleman.
friend and mentor
I wondered how you wrote amidst such uproar:
poems peopled with sculpted figures a bronze nude, St. Francis gesturing in silence.
Your house was a natural disaster:
Jeff's electric keyboards thrummed in the basement;
Oliver hammered like Vulcan in his studio;
Chris raced in and out, serenading his cats.
Your desk shared space with gilt medallions,
encrusted canvasses, a piano littered with books
and music, a Chinese cupboard inherited from
your mother, all crammed into the tiny livingroom,
the whole scene impastoed with manuscripts -walls, floors, arms of the couch.
Here beside the mill at Barker's Creek
in luxurious indolence I read your hasty letter.
Your sons are married, Chris with a child of his own.
You've taken his room for a study, leaving the livingroom
immaculate and spare. You say you have "few years
to do much in." Locked in that upstairs room,
you' ve diverted all energy to one task
while a millwheel, exigent, metaphorical,
clamors below. You're quickened by that sound,
more boisterous, more insistent, than ever was
the howling of Jeff's electric decibels.

Fabian Worsham

13

A LESSON IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
When one lies within, buoyant,
weightless, eyes sealed, floating
in a tepid orb of fluid darkness,
a nebulous and luxuriant universe,
someone must feel the burden:
someone's body must carry the weight;
someone's heart must strain
to keep all in equilibrium -to deliver that darkened universe
with its naive intelligence
into the light.

Fabian Worsham

14

GUERNICA: INTERIOR LANDSCAPE
This bombed-out hovel is my home,
and I am each gaping woman.
Here you'll find no dying horse,
no startled bull, no wall-eyed
corpses strewn upon the carpet.
Yet what the jagged light reveals
is no less devastated.
There are no words, no colors:
only open mouths and pointed tongues
Fabian Worsham

15

EXHIBITS
Christ! Did you take that too The ink from my pen?
My marrow's not enough?
Insatiable man!
You'd drain an angel dry
Then nibble off her wings
Still smiling like a boy.
No doubt my battered heart's
In some canopic jar,
My stuffed head on your wall,
My limbs and trunk all
Pickled for your pleasure.
Well, I still have my thoughts,
My mind is mine.

If I can find my words
(Somewhere, here on this desk ...
In these papers ... under those books ...)
I'll pin you to this page ~specimen.

Cathy Stern

16

"Passage in the Light" No. XXII. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

I

'
"Passage in the Light" No. XXX. Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

Property of the Center

'

l
l

"Passage in the Light"' No. XXV. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

''Time Shadows of Ancient Greece" No. X. Photograph.
SHARON STEW ART

UNFOLDING

1

I am an invisible woman today
even though you think you see
just as you did yesterday.
Then, I was visible to all
though blind to me
and now I am crystal clear to none
but myself. Poof!
I slipped into invisibility.
I saw another woman real
and whole. She made me breathe deep
with Jove. Full body love.
And that's what pushed me out of this world
where whole women are never seen.
Suddenly I noticed the chatter
between women and men,
the incomplete noises of broken
pieces searching out their proper places.
No freedom sings in this visible world
of studied dreams. None.
I went to lunch with the woman
who turned me invisible and now
I sing, sing, sing my freedom song
to myself, still invisible for it sounds in my head alone
and not to her.
2

Lunch time met between us at the table.
Three big words were bursting behind
my nose and eyes,
screaming to get out of my brain,
to live on my tongue and roll out of my mouth
into the sunlight shimmering.
21

Those words, so big that I must tie them down,
are hitched to the bones of my face.
They struggle to free themselves,
no longer to live sleeping in the past;
now awake but pinned down.
Such words long to live spoken!
Oh! If I loose them from their hitching posts
this man's world may come tumbling down.
My own might break. I need another one.
But my legs won't wait,
my thighs warm with fire,
my heart swells with song
my brain critically evaluates
the ropes and my eyes burn
for the breath of women.
Our sex between our legs is our own!
Three words beg, "let me touch myself freely.
Loose me on this world to relive
the flurry of love!"
She sat beside me, whole.
I saw her lips and hands.
We travelled on words, in and out of our brains,
yet I kept three words safely tied to the bones of my face.
May I whisper, "I love women!"
and will the wind blow my words all over the earth
now free to be spoken and heard?
Wish on wind but do not wait...
Magic will stop short and
share a piece of chocolate cake
instead.

22

3
I arrived excited,
my heart big with blood,
my mind stretched to points
yet undetermined
and proceeded to cut up
the vegetables while she,
a magic woman, fried tofu
in butter.
Her lines stood braced by the stove,
reserved with a slight smile
and loaded brain. She cooked
and waited. I floated on carrots and lettuce.
Each crisp, cold touch tingled in my fingers
as I hummed ...
Move smoothly, quietly
into the center of a room ...
Touch hand to hand,
swing silently your bodies
round a slow full circle
landing knee to floor in graceful dance ...
One bare embrace of arms outstretched
and touching palm to palm
and ear to ear, your heads are placed
in silent reverie till pulled by some
magnetic eclipse your faces move as one,
now lips to lips.
I pressed a bud of cauliflower to my tongue
and slid into a woman's world of magic making.
I sit here wet with lover's hands, dinner unfolding.
She stands there gold with butter and tofu
waiting.

Monica Vaughan

23

THE NEW ENGLAND POEMS NO. IX
against river's massive brow
noon directs its course.
i am relearning the landscape,
beneath circular bells
of autumn's sky
the water weaves map-like patterns
similar to your hands.
your back towards me,
you sit on pier's wooden edge,
birches wave over river's
translucent face.
eyestroke by eyestroke,
building earth's colours,
my hand separates water's spiral
surge, the landscape,
sometimes, seems fragile
as we speak of art and cross
vacant overgrown fields,
hues recognized
azure, umber, amethyst,
i did not learn
until my tongue became calm.

24

scenes in reality seldom remain,
laws of forest awakening.
beneath my hands
you moved slightly,
opening, current,
while i walked towards
river's edge,
instead of living
with those nearby,
hours when separated,
i wrote you, a necessity
differing in my moods,
currents churning angular echoes,
unrecorded, aligning sequences
of river's mouth stroking sand.
i have relearned the landscape,
amethystine of your face
pressed close to soil
or the dark stem of night
i did not know i loved,
bowing into your breasts,
until i arrived
the great child
of your motherland.

leslie lopez

25

FEET FIRST
compare me to a bird,
born, eyes closed,
hair shooting from scalp,
metal instrument, blinding.
set me on my elbows,
i shall learn to crawl.
place me on my head,
i shall do headstands.
mother, wailing,
in a sterile room,
white liquid caught
in your throat
as milk leaks into my ears,
november's seasonal blades
surface, past years carve
charcoal ash stories
and place them
in your unlocked palms.
my cheeks raw with ash,
i have fallen
into every footprint
claimed as your own,
unable to unearth
the silent cylinder of my voice.

26

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVII . Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

HOLLOW VALLEY
childless and incapable
of bearing, we slide
over one another, my mouth
crosses small paths of your neck,
your eyes locked within dream's
masks and symbols of these rooms
where, with lovers, you lived
before me, now in darkness
glossy, yellow moon
fears loudly our movements,
affirmation of sorrow
for your child, dead, her hair
falling across your mouth
as the wind sifts soil
from beneath garments,
your body shooting forward
announcing sacrifices necessary
for the new life.
as you move from my breast,
wet with soft tongue of moonlight,
grief sought and sealed
within this house,
the dead child, safe,
we slide into autumn,
bodies pressed against pastures
of clouds, ochre horizons bending,
your body given to me
fragile and swearing
that no death will graze
between the hollow valley
of your breasts and my hands.

leslie lopez

29

WHEN YOU ARE AWAY
my eyes tight within cavern
of monotone voice,
alone, tongue amputated, smooth
like cooled wax,
for once you are not in my morning
waking early, two slim cats
pouncing over lifeless bodies.
they have slept in light's white shadows
listening for recurring voices,
hearing none.
but my right side recalls
your language unceasing
in movement, your hands climbing
the naked ladder, feet below
pegs of moon's full chest,
the steady stream of warmth,
your face beside mine,
times i have left your bed
and slept there, the same,
for fear of loss, we have
learned to be separate.

30

Pr

erty of the Ce11tt:r

shall i wake in sun's voiceless throat,
claws slashing my eyes,
language offering itself only in forms,
shapeless bones,
knowing we have never existed to protect
or discipline the weight of one
body against another,
never content with silence rubbed
water thin.
in my own dark nights of solitude,
i shall lift you in dreams,
tum your face, mouth towards mine,
feel leaf of your tongue
raw with summer's fruit,
i shall sing you to sleep
as though you are my only sister.

leslie lopez

31

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
LESLIE LOPEZ was raised in Southern Louisiana and has lived in
Houston since 1980. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
Louisiana State University, and has won awards for painting. She
received a 1988-1989 Grant Award from the Cultural Arts Council of
Houston for poetry. Her work has been published in Focus,
Common Woman, Houston's Innerview, Eye Prayers, and in the upcoming fall issue of Conditions.

CAROL SNYDER is Associate Professor of Literature and Humanities at the University of Houston Clear Lake, where she has taught
for almost twelve years. She also serves as Series Editor for Gender
and Genre in Literature, a series in feminist literary criticism published
by Garland Press. She writes poetry on the sly.
CATHY STERN received the PEN Southwest Houston Discovery
Prize for Poetry in 1985. Her work has been published in The New
Republic and Shenandoah, and poems and an interview appeared in
the anthology A Wider Giving: Women Writing After A Long
Silence (Chicory Blue Press, 1988.) She teaches English and Creative
Writing at The University of Houston-Downtown.
The presence of light, spirit and sacred symbology in SHARON
STEWART's photographs reflects her continuing pursuit of
self-discovery. The images from the portfolios, "Passage in the
Light" and "Time Shadows of Ancient Greece," were taken on
numerous journeys in the U.S., Europe, and Greece.
Sharon's phhotographs have been exhibited, published and
collected in the U.S. and Europe, in such publications as the British
Journal of Photography; Professional Photographer (Dutch); Women See
Men, published by the Frankfort Art Museum; Texas Art
Observer; SPOT, a critical publication of the Houston Center for
photography; and the catalogue for the triennial of the Belgium
Museum of Photography.
Her current photoessay, "Toxic Tours of Texas," addresses the
power of individuals to challenge and change the harmful hazardous-waste practice of industry and government. Sharon also joyfully
sings in Heartsong, the Houston Area Women's Chorus.

32

MONICA VAUGHAN grew up in north-east Houston, received her
Master of Music degree from Rice University in 1986, and graduated
with honors from the University of Houston Law Center in 1990.
Throughout her career as a student, she has created poems, short
stories, essays, and cycles made up of combinations of these literary
forms. She has also set for voice and instruments a number of her
own works as well as the works of other writers. She is particularly
proud of the song cycle,"A Woman's Mirror," which she commissioned from composer Ann Rivers Witherspoon for soprano and
instrumental ensemble and which she premiered in March, 1988.
That cycle consisted of one of her own poems as well as a poem by
Aphra Behn and one by Leslie Lopez.

FABIAN WORSHAM's poems have appeared in Earth's Daughters,
Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art, Poet Lore, National Forum, The
Florida Review, Southern Humanities Reuiew, Apalachee Quarterly, The
Bellingham Review, and numerous other journals. Her prizewinning
feminist chapbook, Aunt Erma's Country Kitchen & Bordello, was
published by Signpost Press.

33

BECAUSE A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN IS
ONLY A BEGINNING ...

ENCODINGS:
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ISSN:1047-403X



Property of the Center

ENCODINGS

VOLUME ONE

NUMBER TWO

ENCODINGS

Published randomly, twice a year. Editorial and
subscription offices: Liaud: A Women's Press, P.O.
Box 6793, Houston, TX 77265-6793.
Copyright © 1990 by Liaud: A Women's Press. All
rights reserved. Subscription rate: $9.00 per year,
$4.50 single copy. Send self-addressed stamped
envelope for submission guidelines.

Cover Photograph: No. XIV, from the series
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
by Sharon Stewart

ENCODINGS
A Feminist Literary Journal
Volume 1, Number 2

PUBLISHERS:
Liaud: A Women's Press

CO-EDITORS
Audrey Yates Crawford
M. Laurita (Lita) Fike

REVIEWERS
Ibis Gomez-Vega
Gretchen Mieszkowski
M. Bernadette Ryan
Jacquelyn Shawh

This is the second issue of ENCODINGS, and the second venture of our
publishing company, Liaud: AWomen's Press.
The establishment of Liaud and ENCODINGS derives from
our recognition of the fascination for language that is
so characteristic of the current period of feminism. Our purpose is to
provide a forum for women's ways of knowing and speaking.

ISSN:1047-403X

TABLE OF CONTENTS
4

CAROL SNYDER

In Praise of Your Body
Getting Married
Galveston
"In the Winter Extra Blankets for the Cold"

9 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVI

10 CAROL SNYDER

Where We Will Go

12 FABIAN WORSHAM

At the Sheraton in Denton, Texas
Imperatives: The Mill
A Lesson in Social Democracy
Guernica: Interior Landscape

16 CATHY STERN

Exhibits

17 SHARON STEWART

Photographs:
"Passage in the Light"
No.XXII
No.XXX
No.XXV
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
No. X

21

MONICA VAUGHAN

24 LESLIE LOPEZ

Unfolding
The New England Poems No. IX
Feet First

28 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVII

29 LESLIE LOPEZ

Hollow Valley
When You Are Away

32 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

IN PRAISE OF YOUR BODY

I would stop by its nice roadside
a good place to pull off, and shade,
the coolest breezes,
and us so hot and dogtired.

II
I look out for your body
like the first sight of the sea,
everybody laughing and scrambling
to get out of their clothes and into it!

III
I might sing a small tune about it
like the wind in the roof vents
turning with a hum, just going around busily
(Do I love you? Do I, Do I)
mindless as a gnat in spring.

4

IV
I would never make a picture of it
because a pencil is only human and
could accidentally erase but I might
lie down warmly all over it like a suntan.

V
Mainly, however, in praise of your body
I would like to say a few words
privately in its ear if it will meet me
somewhere later as soon as it can
and hurry.

Carol Snyder

5

GEmNG MARRIED
I think I will marry you
in a rented rowboat:
we'll stay out all night
until they quit looking for us;
the stars will present themselves
for hours, front and center;
we'll trail our hands in the slow water.
Eventually the stars will call it
a night, clouds of tulle will lift,
we'll be adrift. The bottom
of the boat will knock as though
sleeping dolphins were turning
under it, pulling the grey spread.
And just there at the fish-breaking
edge of morning where a slight
blue band begins low in the sky,
miles and miles and miles from land
I'll take your hand.

Carol Snyder

6

GALVESTON
The sea is noisy; the wind blows
in like a flag in the wind, whipping
this way and that; four o'clock
by the sun making everything pink,
your skin, the sand the color
of healthy flesh. Right in front of us,
double time, the comic drill
of a sandpiper, various figures -families, couples -- considering
something in the sand, at sea,
their words spun round in the spume.
No one sees us sitting in the dunes
behind a fringe of rubbery green.
Digging down you find a buried shoot,
pale green still and alive,
its roots sent deep, its two leaves
resilient under a close cover of powder.
The sun goes lower and redder;
all of this scene has the tone of my love
for you, another meaning not anywhere
here and to which nothing - not the wind
or the time or the roots of the dune weed
can speak because they blow and pass,
although they go deep.

Carol Snyder

7

"AND IN TI-IE WINTER EXTRA BLANKETS FOR THE COLD"
Dearest person to me and last chance
to grow: our garden from the bedroom
window, will what we planted open
before the frost? Not much of fall
is left; the sun is weak now and falters
on and off, the yellow cucumber star
trailing low, the eggplant in suspense
like a hard black grape. So how
in this eccentric place (nothing
much we chose to grow yet all the given
growing) can we expect
a late, a second gain, the flower
without a name we thought was dill
or weed? Still I am expecting
purple or rose or mixed
blessing to suit my matching
need, to show you what can succeed
against the odds, but guessing
too this plot may not apply
and I must instead myself open,
unloosen the clenched years
and tum to you to know
the will to love and be whole.

Carol Snyder

8

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVI. Photograph.
SHARON STEWART

WHERE WE WILL GO
I was just about to fall asleep,
(I must have been standing up to take
such a terrific fall)
keel over into sleep like a dead
drunk with crosses on my eyes
just about to hit the ground dreaming
when the angel of the lord
-- everyone knows which one is the angel
of the lord arrived in his rainbow pterodactyl wings
looking peevish, bumped me, "Hell!"
I said, ''That remains to be seen," said he.
He looked through me like a crystal ball.
"Jesus," I said, but flattery was getting me
nowhere, so I went along. We were en route
to the temporal dump before you could
collect your thoughts or straighten the bed.
I guessed I was just dead
in the water and that much was true,
but I hadn't anticipated he'd pick up you
when there you were drowsy on darvon,
mussed up good, looking beddish, mortalsinnish and cute. Now the two
of us were really in the soup.
''What is the soup du jour?" I asked, but I knew.
We went along like lambs, wooly bright,
because, as we'd said all along, this thing was right.
The pit of hell yawned at this point, full
of the drifting damned, hands
over mouths, punished for earthly disordered nights.

10

Mt. Heaven, the other way, looked energetic
and alert. We blinked some forty winks
or so, and the angel, no slouch,
bustled like a dexie-head around
and about. God arrived, a greenback eye,
"e pluribus unum," He said. "Ho hum" said we
in unison, then slid down slowly the incline
praying "now we lay us down to sleep,
the woods are lovely, dark and deep,"
our voices dwindling, dull and meek,
"we have an appointment we have to keep;
wake us up in about a week... "
The angel vanished, God's eye shut;
Satan snored, and the light went out.

Carol Snyder

11

AT THE SHERATON IN DENTON, TEXAS
Joyously, I've abandoned my life:
the cluttered desk, the piles of untyped notes,
the dirty dishes and maids who refuse to clean them,
the note that says my son has called the principal a dick again.
I've flown away to an ideal universe: a conference
in a distant city. Aloof,! sit in the lobby, reviewing
the program. I converse with bright young feminists,
and we plot together, honing our subversive blades.
I have a queen-size bed in a room all my own
fashionable, in rose and wedgewood, with tasteful prints
on the walls. Atop the dresser, the TV, defunct remnant
of barbarism, stands dark and silent for three days.
In the mornings I shower and order breakfast,
which a handsome young man brings on a tray.
I tip him generously. I cannot stop smiling.
Settled in my armchair, I drink coffee while butter melts
on blueberry muffins. The eggs are done to perfection.
The slant of the sun could not be more perfect.
At night I pull back the richly patterned coverlet;
the sheets, lightly starched, amazingly ironed, are
white as new snow, soft as feathers, delicate as a moth's wing.
I cannot stop smiling. My head sinks into the buoyant pillow,
the mattress meets the arch of my spine, and I remember
a beautiful man who loved me once. If only he could love me
for an hour -- then go away.

Fabian Worsham

12

IMPERATIVES: THE MILL
for Mary Ann Coleman.
friend and mentor
I wondered how you wrote amidst such uproar:
poems peopled with sculpted figures a bronze nude, St. Francis gesturing in silence.
Your house was a natural disaster:
Jeff's electric keyboards thrummed in the basement;
Oliver hammered like Vulcan in his studio;
Chris raced in and out, serenading his cats.
Your desk shared space with gilt medallions,
encrusted canvasses, a piano littered with books
and music, a Chinese cupboard inherited from
your mother, all crammed into the tiny livingroom,
the whole scene impastoed with manuscripts -walls, floors, arms of the couch.
Here beside the mill at Barker's Creek
in luxurious indolence I read your hasty letter.
Your sons are married, Chris with a child of his own.
You've taken his room for a study, leaving the livingroom
immaculate and spare. You say you have "few years
to do much in." Locked in that upstairs room,
you' ve diverted all energy to one task
while a millwheel, exigent, metaphorical,
clamors below. You're quickened by that sound,
more boisterous, more insistent, than ever was
the howling of Jeff's electric decibels.

Fabian Worsham

13

A LESSON IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
When one lies within, buoyant,
weightless, eyes sealed, floating
in a tepid orb of fluid darkness,
a nebulous and luxuriant universe,
someone must feel the burden:
someone's body must carry the weight;
someone's heart must strain
to keep all in equilibrium -to deliver that darkened universe
with its naive intelligence
into the light.

Fabian Worsham

14

GUERNICA: INTERIOR LANDSCAPE
This bombed-out hovel is my home,
and I am each gaping woman.
Here you'll find no dying horse,
no startled bull, no wall-eyed
corpses strewn upon the carpet.
Yet what the jagged light reveals
is no less devastated.
There are no words, no colors:
only open mouths and pointed tongues
Fabian Worsham

15

EXHIBITS
Christ! Did you take that too The ink from my pen?
My marrow's not enough?
Insatiable man!
You'd drain an angel dry
Then nibble off her wings
Still smiling like a boy.
No doubt my battered heart's
In some canopic jar,
My stuffed head on your wall,
My limbs and trunk all
Pickled for your pleasure.
Well, I still have my thoughts,
My mind is mine.

If I can find my words
(Somewhere, here on this desk ...
In these papers ... under those books ...)
I'll pin you to this page ~specimen.

Cathy Stern

16

"Passage in the Light" No. XXII. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

I

'
"Passage in the Light" No. XXX. Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

Property of the Center

'

l
l

"Passage in the Light"' No. XXV. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

''Time Shadows of Ancient Greece" No. X. Photograph.
SHARON STEW ART

UNFOLDING

1

I am an invisible woman today
even though you think you see
just as you did yesterday.
Then, I was visible to all
though blind to me
and now I am crystal clear to none
but myself. Poof!
I slipped into invisibility.
I saw another woman real
and whole. She made me breathe deep
with Jove. Full body love.
And that's what pushed me out of this world
where whole women are never seen.
Suddenly I noticed the chatter
between women and men,
the incomplete noises of broken
pieces searching out their proper places.
No freedom sings in this visible world
of studied dreams. None.
I went to lunch with the woman
who turned me invisible and now
I sing, sing, sing my freedom song
to myself, still invisible for it sounds in my head alone
and not to her.
2

Lunch time met between us at the table.
Three big words were bursting behind
my nose and eyes,
screaming to get out of my brain,
to live on my tongue and roll out of my mouth
into the sunlight shimmering.
21

Those words, so big that I must tie them down,
are hitched to the bones of my face.
They struggle to free themselves,
no longer to live sleeping in the past;
now awake but pinned down.
Such words long to live spoken!
Oh! If I loose them from their hitching posts
this man's world may come tumbling down.
My own might break. I need another one.
But my legs won't wait,
my thighs warm with fire,
my heart swells with song
my brain critically evaluates
the ropes and my eyes burn
for the breath of women.
Our sex between our legs is our own!
Three words beg, "let me touch myself freely.
Loose me on this world to relive
the flurry of love!"
She sat beside me, whole.
I saw her lips and hands.
We travelled on words, in and out of our brains,
yet I kept three words safely tied to the bones of my face.
May I whisper, "I love women!"
and will the wind blow my words all over the earth
now free to be spoken and heard?
Wish on wind but do not wait...
Magic will stop short and
share a piece of chocolate cake
instead.

22

3
I arrived excited,
my heart big with blood,
my mind stretched to points
yet undetermined
and proceeded to cut up
the vegetables while she,
a magic woman, fried tofu
in butter.
Her lines stood braced by the stove,
reserved with a slight smile
and loaded brain. She cooked
and waited. I floated on carrots and lettuce.
Each crisp, cold touch tingled in my fingers
as I hummed ...
Move smoothly, quietly
into the center of a room ...
Touch hand to hand,
swing silently your bodies
round a slow full circle
landing knee to floor in graceful dance ...
One bare embrace of arms outstretched
and touching palm to palm
and ear to ear, your heads are placed
in silent reverie till pulled by some
magnetic eclipse your faces move as one,
now lips to lips.
I pressed a bud of cauliflower to my tongue
and slid into a woman's world of magic making.
I sit here wet with lover's hands, dinner unfolding.
She stands there gold with butter and tofu
waiting.

Monica Vaughan

23

THE NEW ENGLAND POEMS NO. IX
against river's massive brow
noon directs its course.
i am relearning the landscape,
beneath circular bells
of autumn's sky
the water weaves map-like patterns
similar to your hands.
your back towards me,
you sit on pier's wooden edge,
birches wave over river's
translucent face.
eyestroke by eyestroke,
building earth's colours,
my hand separates water's spiral
surge, the landscape,
sometimes, seems fragile
as we speak of art and cross
vacant overgrown fields,
hues recognized
azure, umber, amethyst,
i did not learn
until my tongue became calm.

24

scenes in reality seldom remain,
laws of forest awakening.
beneath my hands
you moved slightly,
opening, current,
while i walked towards
river's edge,
instead of living
with those nearby,
hours when separated,
i wrote you, a necessity
differing in my moods,
currents churning angular echoes,
unrecorded, aligning sequences
of river's mouth stroking sand.
i have relearned the landscape,
amethystine of your face
pressed close to soil
or the dark stem of night
i did not know i loved,
bowing into your breasts,
until i arrived
the great child
of your motherland.

leslie lopez

25

FEET FIRST
compare me to a bird,
born, eyes closed,
hair shooting from scalp,
metal instrument, blinding.
set me on my elbows,
i shall learn to crawl.
place me on my head,
i shall do headstands.
mother, wailing,
in a sterile room,
white liquid caught
in your throat
as milk leaks into my ears,
november's seasonal blades
surface, past years carve
charcoal ash stories
and place them
in your unlocked palms.
my cheeks raw with ash,
i have fallen
into every footprint
claimed as your own,
unable to unearth
the silent cylinder of my voice.

26

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVII . Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

HOLLOW VALLEY
childless and incapable
of bearing, we slide
over one another, my mouth
crosses small paths of your neck,
your eyes locked within dream's
masks and symbols of these rooms
where, with lovers, you lived
before me, now in darkness
glossy, yellow moon
fears loudly our movements,
affirmation of sorrow
for your child, dead, her hair
falling across your mouth
as the wind sifts soil
from beneath garments,
your body shooting forward
announcing sacrifices necessary
for the new life.
as you move from my breast,
wet with soft tongue of moonlight,
grief sought and sealed
within this house,
the dead child, safe,
we slide into autumn,
bodies pressed against pastures
of clouds, ochre horizons bending,
your body given to me
fragile and swearing
that no death will graze
between the hollow valley
of your breasts and my hands.

leslie lopez

29

WHEN YOU ARE AWAY
my eyes tight within cavern
of monotone voice,
alone, tongue amputated, smooth
like cooled wax,
for once you are not in my morning
waking early, two slim cats
pouncing over lifeless bodies.
they have slept in light's white shadows
listening for recurring voices,
hearing none.
but my right side recalls
your language unceasing
in movement, your hands climbing
the naked ladder, feet below
pegs of moon's full chest,
the steady stream of warmth,
your face beside mine,
times i have left your bed
and slept there, the same,
for fear of loss, we have
learned to be separate.

30

Pr

erty of the Ce11tt:r

shall i wake in sun's voiceless throat,
claws slashing my eyes,
language offering itself only in forms,
shapeless bones,
knowing we have never existed to protect
or discipline the weight of one
body against another,
never content with silence rubbed
water thin.
in my own dark nights of solitude,
i shall lift you in dreams,
tum your face, mouth towards mine,
feel leaf of your tongue
raw with summer's fruit,
i shall sing you to sleep
as though you are my only sister.

leslie lopez

31

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
LESLIE LOPEZ was raised in Southern Louisiana and has lived in
Houston since 1980. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
Louisiana State University, and has won awards for painting. She
received a 1988-1989 Grant Award from the Cultural Arts Council of
Houston for poetry. Her work has been published in Focus,
Common Woman, Houston's Innerview, Eye Prayers, and in the upcoming fall issue of Conditions.

CAROL SNYDER is Associate Professor of Literature and Humanities at the University of Houston Clear Lake, where she has taught
for almost twelve years. She also serves as Series Editor for Gender
and Genre in Literature, a series in feminist literary criticism published
by Garland Press. She writes poetry on the sly.
CATHY STERN received the PEN Southwest Houston Discovery
Prize for Poetry in 1985. Her work has been published in The New
Republic and Shenandoah, and poems and an interview appeared in
the anthology A Wider Giving: Women Writing After A Long
Silence (Chicory Blue Press, 1988.) She teaches English and Creative
Writing at The University of Houston-Downtown.
The presence of light, spirit and sacred symbology in SHARON
STEWART's photographs reflects her continuing pursuit of
self-discovery. The images from the portfolios, "Passage in the
Light" and "Time Shadows of Ancient Greece," were taken on
numerous journeys in the U.S., Europe, and Greece.
Sharon's phhotographs have been exhibited, published and
collected in the U.S. and Europe, in such publications as the British
Journal of Photography; Professional Photographer (Dutch); Women See
Men, published by the Frankfort Art Museum; Texas Art
Observer; SPOT, a critical publication of the Houston Center for
photography; and the catalogue for the triennial of the Belgium
Museum of Photography.
Her current photoessay, "Toxic Tours of Texas," addresses the
power of individuals to challenge and change the harmful hazardous-waste practice of industry and government. Sharon also joyfully
sings in Heartsong, the Houston Area Women's Chorus.

32

MONICA VAUGHAN grew up in north-east Houston, received her
Master of Music degree from Rice University in 1986, and graduated
with honors from the University of Houston Law Center in 1990.
Throughout her career as a student, she has created poems, short
stories, essays, and cycles made up of combinations of these literary
forms. She has also set for voice and instruments a number of her
own works as well as the works of other writers. She is particularly
proud of the song cycle,"A Woman's Mirror," which she commissioned from composer Ann Rivers Witherspoon for soprano and
instrumental ensemble and which she premiered in March, 1988.
That cycle consisted of one of her own poems as well as a poem by
Aphra Behn and one by Leslie Lopez.

FABIAN WORSHAM's poems have appeared in Earth's Daughters,
Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art, Poet Lore, National Forum, The
Florida Review, Southern Humanities Reuiew, Apalachee Quarterly, The
Bellingham Review, and numerous other journals. Her prizewinning
feminist chapbook, Aunt Erma's Country Kitchen & Bordello, was
published by Signpost Press.

33

BECAUSE A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN IS
ONLY A BEGINNING ...

ENCODINGS:
A Feminist Literary Journal

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Property of the Center

ENCODINGS

VOLUME ONE

NUMBER TWO

ENCODINGS

Published randomly, twice a year. Editorial and
subscription offices: Liaud: A Women's Press, P.O.
Box 6793, Houston, TX 77265-6793.
Copyright © 1990 by Liaud: A Women's Press. All
rights reserved. Subscription rate: $9.00 per year,
$4.50 single copy. Send self-addressed stamped
envelope for submission guidelines.

Cover Photograph: No. XIV, from the series
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
by Sharon Stewart

ENCODINGS
A Feminist Literary Journal
Volume 1, Number 2

PUBLISHERS:
Liaud: A Women's Press

CO-EDITORS
Audrey Yates Crawford
M. Laurita (Lita) Fike

REVIEWERS
Ibis Gomez-Vega
Gretchen Mieszkowski
M. Bernadette Ryan
Jacquelyn Shawh

This is the second issue of ENCODINGS, and the second venture of our
publishing company, Liaud: AWomen's Press.
The establishment of Liaud and ENCODINGS derives from
our recognition of the fascination for language that is
so characteristic of the current period of feminism. Our purpose is to
provide a forum for women's ways of knowing and speaking.

ISSN:1047-403X

TABLE OF CONTENTS
4

CAROL SNYDER

In Praise of Your Body
Getting Married
Galveston
"In the Winter Extra Blankets for the Cold"

9 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVI

10 CAROL SNYDER

Where We Will Go

12 FABIAN WORSHAM

At the Sheraton in Denton, Texas
Imperatives: The Mill
A Lesson in Social Democracy
Guernica: Interior Landscape

16 CATHY STERN

Exhibits

17 SHARON STEWART

Photographs:
"Passage in the Light"
No.XXII
No.XXX
No.XXV
"Time Shadows of Ancient Greece"
No. X

21

MONICA VAUGHAN

24 LESLIE LOPEZ

Unfolding
The New England Poems No. IX
Feet First

28 SHARON STEWART

Photograph:
"Passage in the Light"
No. XXVII

29 LESLIE LOPEZ

Hollow Valley
When You Are Away

32 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

IN PRAISE OF YOUR BODY

I would stop by its nice roadside
a good place to pull off, and shade,
the coolest breezes,
and us so hot and dogtired.

II
I look out for your body
like the first sight of the sea,
everybody laughing and scrambling
to get out of their clothes and into it!

III
I might sing a small tune about it
like the wind in the roof vents
turning with a hum, just going around busily
(Do I love you? Do I, Do I)
mindless as a gnat in spring.

4

IV
I would never make a picture of it
because a pencil is only human and
could accidentally erase but I might
lie down warmly all over it like a suntan.

V
Mainly, however, in praise of your body
I would like to say a few words
privately in its ear if it will meet me
somewhere later as soon as it can
and hurry.

Carol Snyder

5

GEmNG MARRIED
I think I will marry you
in a rented rowboat:
we'll stay out all night
until they quit looking for us;
the stars will present themselves
for hours, front and center;
we'll trail our hands in the slow water.
Eventually the stars will call it
a night, clouds of tulle will lift,
we'll be adrift. The bottom
of the boat will knock as though
sleeping dolphins were turning
under it, pulling the grey spread.
And just there at the fish-breaking
edge of morning where a slight
blue band begins low in the sky,
miles and miles and miles from land
I'll take your hand.

Carol Snyder

6

GALVESTON
The sea is noisy; the wind blows
in like a flag in the wind, whipping
this way and that; four o'clock
by the sun making everything pink,
your skin, the sand the color
of healthy flesh. Right in front of us,
double time, the comic drill
of a sandpiper, various figures -families, couples -- considering
something in the sand, at sea,
their words spun round in the spume.
No one sees us sitting in the dunes
behind a fringe of rubbery green.
Digging down you find a buried shoot,
pale green still and alive,
its roots sent deep, its two leaves
resilient under a close cover of powder.
The sun goes lower and redder;
all of this scene has the tone of my love
for you, another meaning not anywhere
here and to which nothing - not the wind
or the time or the roots of the dune weed
can speak because they blow and pass,
although they go deep.

Carol Snyder

7

"AND IN TI-IE WINTER EXTRA BLANKETS FOR THE COLD"
Dearest person to me and last chance
to grow: our garden from the bedroom
window, will what we planted open
before the frost? Not much of fall
is left; the sun is weak now and falters
on and off, the yellow cucumber star
trailing low, the eggplant in suspense
like a hard black grape. So how
in this eccentric place (nothing
much we chose to grow yet all the given
growing) can we expect
a late, a second gain, the flower
without a name we thought was dill
or weed? Still I am expecting
purple or rose or mixed
blessing to suit my matching
need, to show you what can succeed
against the odds, but guessing
too this plot may not apply
and I must instead myself open,
unloosen the clenched years
and tum to you to know
the will to love and be whole.

Carol Snyder

8

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVI. Photograph.
SHARON STEWART

WHERE WE WILL GO
I was just about to fall asleep,
(I must have been standing up to take
such a terrific fall)
keel over into sleep like a dead
drunk with crosses on my eyes
just about to hit the ground dreaming
when the angel of the lord
-- everyone knows which one is the angel
of the lord arrived in his rainbow pterodactyl wings
looking peevish, bumped me, "Hell!"
I said, ''That remains to be seen," said he.
He looked through me like a crystal ball.
"Jesus," I said, but flattery was getting me
nowhere, so I went along. We were en route
to the temporal dump before you could
collect your thoughts or straighten the bed.
I guessed I was just dead
in the water and that much was true,
but I hadn't anticipated he'd pick up you
when there you were drowsy on darvon,
mussed up good, looking beddish, mortalsinnish and cute. Now the two
of us were really in the soup.
''What is the soup du jour?" I asked, but I knew.
We went along like lambs, wooly bright,
because, as we'd said all along, this thing was right.
The pit of hell yawned at this point, full
of the drifting damned, hands
over mouths, punished for earthly disordered nights.

10

Mt. Heaven, the other way, looked energetic
and alert. We blinked some forty winks
or so, and the angel, no slouch,
bustled like a dexie-head around
and about. God arrived, a greenback eye,
"e pluribus unum," He said. "Ho hum" said we
in unison, then slid down slowly the incline
praying "now we lay us down to sleep,
the woods are lovely, dark and deep,"
our voices dwindling, dull and meek,
"we have an appointment we have to keep;
wake us up in about a week... "
The angel vanished, God's eye shut;
Satan snored, and the light went out.

Carol Snyder

11

AT THE SHERATON IN DENTON, TEXAS
Joyously, I've abandoned my life:
the cluttered desk, the piles of untyped notes,
the dirty dishes and maids who refuse to clean them,
the note that says my son has called the principal a dick again.
I've flown away to an ideal universe: a conference
in a distant city. Aloof,! sit in the lobby, reviewing
the program. I converse with bright young feminists,
and we plot together, honing our subversive blades.
I have a queen-size bed in a room all my own
fashionable, in rose and wedgewood, with tasteful prints
on the walls. Atop the dresser, the TV, defunct remnant
of barbarism, stands dark and silent for three days.
In the mornings I shower and order breakfast,
which a handsome young man brings on a tray.
I tip him generously. I cannot stop smiling.
Settled in my armchair, I drink coffee while butter melts
on blueberry muffins. The eggs are done to perfection.
The slant of the sun could not be more perfect.
At night I pull back the richly patterned coverlet;
the sheets, lightly starched, amazingly ironed, are
white as new snow, soft as feathers, delicate as a moth's wing.
I cannot stop smiling. My head sinks into the buoyant pillow,
the mattress meets the arch of my spine, and I remember
a beautiful man who loved me once. If only he could love me
for an hour -- then go away.

Fabian Worsham

12

IMPERATIVES: THE MILL
for Mary Ann Coleman.
friend and mentor
I wondered how you wrote amidst such uproar:
poems peopled with sculpted figures a bronze nude, St. Francis gesturing in silence.
Your house was a natural disaster:
Jeff's electric keyboards thrummed in the basement;
Oliver hammered like Vulcan in his studio;
Chris raced in and out, serenading his cats.
Your desk shared space with gilt medallions,
encrusted canvasses, a piano littered with books
and music, a Chinese cupboard inherited from
your mother, all crammed into the tiny livingroom,
the whole scene impastoed with manuscripts -walls, floors, arms of the couch.
Here beside the mill at Barker's Creek
in luxurious indolence I read your hasty letter.
Your sons are married, Chris with a child of his own.
You've taken his room for a study, leaving the livingroom
immaculate and spare. You say you have "few years
to do much in." Locked in that upstairs room,
you' ve diverted all energy to one task
while a millwheel, exigent, metaphorical,
clamors below. You're quickened by that sound,
more boisterous, more insistent, than ever was
the howling of Jeff's electric decibels.

Fabian Worsham

13

A LESSON IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
When one lies within, buoyant,
weightless, eyes sealed, floating
in a tepid orb of fluid darkness,
a nebulous and luxuriant universe,
someone must feel the burden:
someone's body must carry the weight;
someone's heart must strain
to keep all in equilibrium -to deliver that darkened universe
with its naive intelligence
into the light.

Fabian Worsham

14

GUERNICA: INTERIOR LANDSCAPE
This bombed-out hovel is my home,
and I am each gaping woman.
Here you'll find no dying horse,
no startled bull, no wall-eyed
corpses strewn upon the carpet.
Yet what the jagged light reveals
is no less devastated.
There are no words, no colors:
only open mouths and pointed tongues
Fabian Worsham

15

EXHIBITS
Christ! Did you take that too The ink from my pen?
My marrow's not enough?
Insatiable man!
You'd drain an angel dry
Then nibble off her wings
Still smiling like a boy.
No doubt my battered heart's
In some canopic jar,
My stuffed head on your wall,
My limbs and trunk all
Pickled for your pleasure.
Well, I still have my thoughts,
My mind is mine.

If I can find my words
(Somewhere, here on this desk ...
In these papers ... under those books ...)
I'll pin you to this page ~specimen.

Cathy Stern

16

"Passage in the Light" No. XXII. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

I

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"Passage in the Light" No. XXX. Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

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"Passage in the Light"' No. XXV. Photograph.

SHARON STEWART

''Time Shadows of Ancient Greece" No. X. Photograph.
SHARON STEW ART

UNFOLDING

1

I am an invisible woman today
even though you think you see
just as you did yesterday.
Then, I was visible to all
though blind to me
and now I am crystal clear to none
but myself. Poof!
I slipped into invisibility.
I saw another woman real
and whole. She made me breathe deep
with Jove. Full body love.
And that's what pushed me out of this world
where whole women are never seen.
Suddenly I noticed the chatter
between women and men,
the incomplete noises of broken
pieces searching out their proper places.
No freedom sings in this visible world
of studied dreams. None.
I went to lunch with the woman
who turned me invisible and now
I sing, sing, sing my freedom song
to myself, still invisible for it sounds in my head alone
and not to her.
2

Lunch time met between us at the table.
Three big words were bursting behind
my nose and eyes,
screaming to get out of my brain,
to live on my tongue and roll out of my mouth
into the sunlight shimmering.
21

Those words, so big that I must tie them down,
are hitched to the bones of my face.
They struggle to free themselves,
no longer to live sleeping in the past;
now awake but pinned down.
Such words long to live spoken!
Oh! If I loose them from their hitching posts
this man's world may come tumbling down.
My own might break. I need another one.
But my legs won't wait,
my thighs warm with fire,
my heart swells with song
my brain critically evaluates
the ropes and my eyes burn
for the breath of women.
Our sex between our legs is our own!
Three words beg, "let me touch myself freely.
Loose me on this world to relive
the flurry of love!"
She sat beside me, whole.
I saw her lips and hands.
We travelled on words, in and out of our brains,
yet I kept three words safely tied to the bones of my face.
May I whisper, "I love women!"
and will the wind blow my words all over the earth
now free to be spoken and heard?
Wish on wind but do not wait...
Magic will stop short and
share a piece of chocolate cake
instead.

22

3
I arrived excited,
my heart big with blood,
my mind stretched to points
yet undetermined
and proceeded to cut up
the vegetables while she,
a magic woman, fried tofu
in butter.
Her lines stood braced by the stove,
reserved with a slight smile
and loaded brain. She cooked
and waited. I floated on carrots and lettuce.
Each crisp, cold touch tingled in my fingers
as I hummed ...
Move smoothly, quietly
into the center of a room ...
Touch hand to hand,
swing silently your bodies
round a slow full circle
landing knee to floor in graceful dance ...
One bare embrace of arms outstretched
and touching palm to palm
and ear to ear, your heads are placed
in silent reverie till pulled by some
magnetic eclipse your faces move as one,
now lips to lips.
I pressed a bud of cauliflower to my tongue
and slid into a woman's world of magic making.
I sit here wet with lover's hands, dinner unfolding.
She stands there gold with butter and tofu
waiting.

Monica Vaughan

23

THE NEW ENGLAND POEMS NO. IX
against river's massive brow
noon directs its course.
i am relearning the landscape,
beneath circular bells
of autumn's sky
the water weaves map-like patterns
similar to your hands.
your back towards me,
you sit on pier's wooden edge,
birches wave over river's
translucent face.
eyestroke by eyestroke,
building earth's colours,
my hand separates water's spiral
surge, the landscape,
sometimes, seems fragile
as we speak of art and cross
vacant overgrown fields,
hues recognized
azure, umber, amethyst,
i did not learn
until my tongue became calm.

24

scenes in reality seldom remain,
laws of forest awakening.
beneath my hands
you moved slightly,
opening, current,
while i walked towards
river's edge,
instead of living
with those nearby,
hours when separated,
i wrote you, a necessity
differing in my moods,
currents churning angular echoes,
unrecorded, aligning sequences
of river's mouth stroking sand.
i have relearned the landscape,
amethystine of your face
pressed close to soil
or the dark stem of night
i did not know i loved,
bowing into your breasts,
until i arrived
the great child
of your motherland.

leslie lopez

25

FEET FIRST
compare me to a bird,
born, eyes closed,
hair shooting from scalp,
metal instrument, blinding.
set me on my elbows,
i shall learn to crawl.
place me on my head,
i shall do headstands.
mother, wailing,
in a sterile room,
white liquid caught
in your throat
as milk leaks into my ears,
november's seasonal blades
surface, past years carve
charcoal ash stories
and place them
in your unlocked palms.
my cheeks raw with ash,
i have fallen
into every footprint
claimed as your own,
unable to unearth
the silent cylinder of my voice.

26

"Passage in the Light" No. XXVII . Photograph.

SHARON STEW ART

HOLLOW VALLEY
childless and incapable
of bearing, we slide
over one another, my mouth
crosses small paths of your neck,
your eyes locked within dream's
masks and symbols of these rooms
where, with lovers, you lived
before me, now in darkness
glossy, yellow moon
fears loudly our movements,
affirmation of sorrow
for your child, dead, her hair
falling across your mouth
as the wind sifts soil
from beneath garments,
your body shooting forward
announcing sacrifices necessary
for the new life.
as you move from my breast,
wet with soft tongue of moonlight,
grief sought and sealed
within this house,
the dead child, safe,
we slide into autumn,
bodies pressed against pastures
of clouds, ochre horizons bending,
your body given to me
fragile and swearing
that no death will graze
between the hollow valley
of your breasts and my hands.

leslie lopez

29

WHEN YOU ARE AWAY
my eyes tight within cavern
of monotone voice,
alone, tongue amputated, smooth
like cooled wax,
for once you are not in my morning
waking early, two slim cats
pouncing over lifeless bodies.
they have slept in light's white shadows
listening for recurring voices,
hearing none.
but my right side recalls
your language unceasing
in movement, your hands climbing
the naked ladder, feet below
pegs of moon's full chest,
the steady stream of warmth,
your face beside mine,
times i have left your bed
and slept there, the same,
for fear of loss, we have
learned to be separate.

30

Pr

erty of the Ce11tt:r

shall i wake in sun's voiceless throat,
claws slashing my eyes,
language offering itself only in forms,
shapeless bones,
knowing we have never existed to protect
or discipline the weight of one
body against another,
never content with silence rubbed
water thin.
in my own dark nights of solitude,
i shall lift you in dreams,
tum your face, mouth towards mine,
feel leaf of your tongue
raw with summer's fruit,
i shall sing you to sleep
as though you are my only sister.

leslie lopez

31

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
LESLIE LOPEZ was raised in Southern Louisiana and has lived in
Houston since 1980. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
Louisiana State University, and has won awards for painting. She
received a 1988-1989 Grant Award from the Cultural Arts Council of
Houston for poetry. Her work has been published in Focus,
Common Woman, Houston's Innerview, Eye Prayers, and in the upcoming fall issue of Conditions.

CAROL SNYDER is Associate Professor of Literature and Humanities at the University of Houston Clear Lake, where she has taught
for almost twelve years. She also serves as Series Editor for Gender
and Genre in Literature, a series in feminist literary criticism published
by Garland Press. She writes poetry on the sly.
CATHY STERN received the PEN Southwest Houston Discovery
Prize for Poetry in 1985. Her work has been published in The New
Republic and Shenandoah, and poems and an interview appeared in
the anthology A Wider Giving: Women Writing After A Long
Silence (Chicory Blue Press, 1988.) She teaches English and Creative
Writing at The University of Houston-Downtown.
The presence of light, spirit and sacred symbology in SHARON
STEWART's photographs reflects her continuing pursuit of
self-discovery. The images from the portfolios, "Passage in the
Light" and "Time Shadows of Ancient Greece," were taken on
numerous journeys in the U.S., Europe, and Greece.
Sharon's phhotographs have been exhibited, published and
collected in the U.S. and Europe, in such publications as the British
Journal of Photography; Professional Photographer (Dutch); Women See
Men, published by the Frankfort Art Museum; Texas Art
Observer; SPOT, a critical publication of the Houston Center for
photography; and the catalogue for the triennial of the Belgium
Museum of Photography.
Her current photoessay, "Toxic Tours of Texas," addresses the
power of individuals to challenge and change the harmful hazardous-waste practice of industry and government. Sharon also joyfully
sings in Heartsong, the Houston Area Women's Chorus.

32

MONICA VAUGHAN grew up in north-east Houston, received her
Master of Music degree from Rice University in 1986, and graduated
with honors from the University of Houston Law Center in 1990.
Throughout her career as a student, she has created poems, short
stories, essays, and cycles made up of combinations of these literary
forms. She has also set for voice and instruments a number of her
own works as well as the works of other writers. She is particularly
proud of the song cycle,"A Woman's Mirror," which she commissioned from composer Ann Rivers Witherspoon for soprano and
instrumental ensemble and which she premiered in March, 1988.
That cycle consisted of one of her own poems as well as a poem by
Aphra Behn and one by Leslie Lopez.

FABIAN WORSHAM's poems have appeared in Earth's Daughters,
Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art, Poet Lore, National Forum, The
Florida Review, Southern Humanities Reuiew, Apalachee Quarterly, The
Bellingham Review, and numerous other journals. Her prizewinning
feminist chapbook, Aunt Erma's Country Kitchen & Bordello, was
published by Signpost Press.

33

BECAUSE A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN IS
ONLY A BEGINNING ...

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