POETREE

The next poem Michelle found.

Wind
Janice Gould

( What can I say about someone who )


Janice Gould is a Koyangk'auwi Maidu poet and an assistant professor in Women's and Ethnic Studies and Native American Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

What can I say about someone who performs interesting magic, Gould wrote. Someone like you, Michelle said. A force of nature. And Lien smiled.


Source: Doubters and Dreamers, Janice Gould

Lien found the next poem, after Michelle said she was afraid to introduce Lien to her family.

Loving In The War Years
Cherríe Moraga

( Loving you is like living )


Cherríe Moraga describes herself as a 'Xicanadyke'. "I am ever-grateful to feminism for teaching me this," she writes, "that political oppression is always experienced personally by someone."

Love is living dangerously, Moraga wrote. I've got to take you as you come to me. I refuse, said Michelle, to be afraid.


Source: Loving in the War Years, Cherríe L. Moraga

Once there was a girl; once there was a girl. Women, both, really. Her name was Lien; her name was Michelle. After Lien met Michelle, she copied out this poem and gave it to Michelle.


Fragment 31
Sappho tr. Anne Carson

( He seems to me equal to gods that man )


Sappho. The most readily recognized queer female poet in the world. Not, probably, the first—that honor may go to Enheduanna, the first poet whose name we know. But the most recognizable name among queer female poets, and Sappho 31 may be her best-known poem.

All is to be dared, Sappho wrote. So Lien dared. But the rest of the poem, unless the last stanza of Catullus 51 is an accurate translation (unlikely), is lost.


Source: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Anne Carson