little jess. • "the personal is political" by daphne gottlieb (from "why things burn")

“the personal is political” by daphne gottlieb (from “why things burn”)

“It kills me, the way the world is.

Literally.

I sat down to write about it, about how
every 15 seconds a woman is battered in the United States
about how a woman is raped every 1.3 minutes, about how
1 in 8 women develops breast cancer
and what I wrote was
I like you.

This is a problem. The world already has
too many of those. I already have too many
of those.

I sat down to write about how
desire and hate killed Matthew Shepard
and when I write desire
I think of you
I like you
my pen sprouts snuggly kittens and spring flowers and
I hate myself for it

I like you so much I had to have
therapy for it
and
I like you so much
I fucked other people
to get rid of it
and the weekend you went to Disneyland
I tried to grow mouse ears
I tried to be your e-ticket
I tried to grow up to be your
full-service hotel except
I won’t throw you out for
using bad words like they do
so if you say
oh, fuck me
oh, god
oh, take me
I’ll take you back to bed

I like you so much this
isn’t in my agenda; I like you so much but this
should be a poem about breast cancer
and I like you so much this
should be a poem about genocide
and I like you so much this
should be a poem about ending capitalism
smashing the state
stating the obvious
getting smashed
to tell you
I’ll fuck capitalism and patriarchy and totalitarianism
to get next to you
I will deep throat my politics
I will get more therapy that I won’t need if you’re near me
because therapy and politics are all about
making the world a little more perfect
when I close the door and it’s you and me
the world is a little more perfect
whenever you smile at me
in a world that doesn’t offer many smiles
the world is a little more perfect
the world is perfect
whenever
I’m with you.”