Lesbian Poetry Quotes

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me, Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

gathering flowers so very delicate a girl

I’m going to become a beat poet and a lesbian!

It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way—reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed—be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe—have stayed with me all these years

I leave the kitchen table to bathe, and to dress for church. If only my closet held on its shelves an array of faces I could wear rather than dresses, I would know which face to put on today. As for the dresses, I haven't a clue.

The bag I wanted was beyond reason - something to hold my poems, twice as big as the universe and it must be androgynous.

Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias. -James (from "Descendants of the Eminent")

I want to love like my grandmother, who loved a woman like Joseph loved Mary. Someone so imperfect, so human, brave enough to love someone who already knows God.

I asked myself What, Sappho, can you give one who has everything, like Aphrodite?

Otherwise: the dark, and our bodies, two strange women trying to touch each other.

I tell her I sing roses too, / My hands in the dirt where she lives forever

Sunshine If it were possible to place you in my brain to let you roam around in and out my thought waves you would never have to ask why do you love me? This morning as you slept I wanted to kiss you awake say I love you till your brain smiled and nodded yes this woman does love me. Each day the list grows filled with the things that are you things that make my heart jump yet words would sound strange become corny in utterance. In the morning when I wake I don’t look out my window to see if the sun is shining. I turn to you instead.

Being with girls is the same—it’s shameless and gritty, it’s not as soft as people make it out to be. It’s soft with men too. Even unknowingly, we diminish ourselves little by little to feel more loved. As girls, we don’t need to diminish ourselves when we’re together, we fit in every sense of the word. It doesn’t matter if we’re bruised, bloody, or empty, we become these things together—we fit.

The very conventions of poetry were devised to encode experience, to make it less obvious and thereby more true. To make a metaphor, after all, is to describe something in terms of what it is not, the better to apprehend what it is.

Men don't interest me. Not that I'm a lesbian. Don't get that idea. I write poetry.

,To own a Susan of my own Is of itself a Bliss — Whatever realm I forfeit, Lord, Continue me in this!

To own a Susan of my own Is of itself a Bliss — Whatever realm I forfeit, Lord, Continue me in this!

There is so much joy in the world, and I have bled to find the sun.

Now tell me, briefly, what the word ‘homosexuality’ means to you, in your own words." "Love flowers pearl, of delighted arms. Warm and water. Melting of vanilla wafer in the pants. Pink petal roses trembling overdew on the lips, soft and juicy fruit. No teeth. No nasty spit. Lips chewing oysters without grimy sand or whiskers. Pastry. Gingerbread. Warm, sweet bread. Cinnamon toast poetry. Justice equality higher wages. Independent angel song. It means I can do what I want.

When i make love to you i try with each stroke of my tongue to say i love you to tease i love you to hammer i love you to melt i love you and your sounds drift down oh god! oh jesus! and i think here it is, some dude’s getting credit for what a woman has done again.

My brunette with the golden eyes, your ivory body, your amber Has left bright reflections in the room Above the garden. The clear midnight sky, under my closed lids, Still shines… I am drunk from so many roses Redder than wine. Leaving their garden, the roses have followed me… I drink their brief breath, I breathe their life. All of them are here. It’s a miracle… The stars have risen, Hastily, across the wide windows Where the melted gold pours. Now, among the roses and the stars, You, here in my room, loosening your robe, And your nakedness glistens Your unspeakable gaze rests on my eyes… Without stars and without flowers, I dream the impossible In the cold night.

The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati turn their trusting faces to the sun say to me care for us nurture us in my dreams I shudder and I run. I am six in a playground of white children Darkie, sing us an Indian song! Eight in a roomful of elders all mock my broken Gujarati English girl! Twelve, I tunnel into books forge an armor of English words. Eighteen, shaved head combat boots - shamed by masis in white saris neon judgments singe my western head. Mother tongue. Matrubhasha tongue of the mother I murder in myself. Through the years I watch Gujarati swell the swaggering egos of men mirror them over and over at twice their natural size. Through the years I watch Gujarati dissolve bones and teeth of women, break them on anvils of duty and service, burn them to skeletal ash. Words that don't exist in Gujarati : Self-expression. Individual. Lesbian. English rises in my throat rapier flashed at yuppie boys who claim their people “civilized” mine. Thunderbolt hurled at cab drivers yelling Dirty black bastard! Force-field against teenage hoods hissing F****ing Paki bitch! Their tongue - or mine? Have I become the enemy? Listen: my father speaks Urdu language of dancing peacocks rosewater fountains even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi suave and melodic earthy Punjabi salty rich as saag paneer coastal Kiswahili laced with Arabic, he speaks Gujarati solid ancestral pride. Five languages five different worlds yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat cold spiky words make the only reality. Words that don't exist in English: Najjar Garba Arati. If we cannot name it does it exist? When we lose language does culture die? What happens to a tongue of milk-heavy cows, earthen pots jingling anklets, temple bells, when its children grow up in Silicon Valley to become programmers? Then there's American: Kin'uh get some service? Dontcha have ice? Not: May I have please? Ben, mane madhath karso? Tafadhali nipe rafiki Donnez-moi, s'il vous plait Puedo tener….. Hello, I said can I get some service?! Like, where's the line for Ay-mericans in this goddamn airport? Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis: Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf? Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a' July! Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot! The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati bright as butter succulent cherries sounds I can paint on the air with my breath dance through like a Sufi mystic words I can weep and howl and devour words I can kiss and taste and dream this tongue I take back.

Adventure seeker, Risk taker, Her art is her heart. Her sultry gaze, Her casually defiant cross-dressing, Her good looks, Rich, husky contralto.

All around the smell of that necro-smoke, that nether-weed. And up and at the hedonist impulse, rejoice, rejoice, in the disconnect my pretty things, fly monkeys, fly! The hip chick in the back, her legs uncrossed to let in air and let out pretention as the lights are down and it’s not necessary, nor should it be even with the lights up, all around faces, turned away and yet minds knowing, knowing there is a presence, a power about the room, the charge is different than it was before this small chick came in. Rejoice, simpatico, rejoice. It’s her night. A night of the explosion. Pow—bang-ka-boom and yet it’s whispered and yet it’s heard through the walls at 3 A.M. by attentive ears and hands clenching in the frustration of being unsolicited by the owner of this spectacle. A woman’s sigh of ecstasy, and his tears at being not the cause.

Compañera, cuando amábamos (for Juanita Ramos and other spik dykes) ¿Volverán, campañera, esas tardes sordas Cuando nos amábamos tiradas en las sombras bajo otoño? Mis ojos clavados en tu mirada Tu mirada que siempre retiraba al mundo Esas tardes cuando nos acostábamos en las nubes Mano en mano nos paseábamos por las calles Entre niños jugando handball Vendedores y sus sabores de carne chamuzcada. La gente mirando nuestras manos Nos pescaban los ojos y se sonreían cómplices en este asunto del aire suave. En un café u otro nos sentábamos bien cerquita. Nos gustaba todo: las bodegas tiznadas La música de Silvio, el ruido de los trenes Y habichuelas. Compañera, ¿Volverán esas tardes sordas cuando nos amábamos? ¿Te acuerdas cuando te decía ¡tócame!? ¿Cuándo ilesa carne buscaba carne y dientes labios En los laberintos de tus bocas? Esas tardes, islas no descubiertas Cuando caminábamos hasta la orilla. Mis dedos lentos andaban las lomas de tus pechos, Recorriendo la llanura de tu espalda Tus moras hinchándose en mi boca La cueva mojada y racima. Tu corazón en mi lengua hasta en mis sueños. Dos pescadoras nadando en los mares Buscando esa perla. ¿No te acuerdas como nos amábamos, compañera? ¿Volverán esas tardes cuando vacilábamos Pasos largos, manos entrelazadas en la playa? Las gaviotas y las brizas Dos manfloras vagas en una isla de mutua melodía. Tus tiernas palmas y los planetas que se caián. Esas tardes tiñadas de mojo Cuando nos entregábamos a las olas Cuando nos tirábamos En el zacate del parque Dos cuerpos de mujer bajo los árboles Mirando los barcos cruzando el río Tus pestañas barriendo mi cara Dormitando, oliendo tu piel de amapola. Dos extranjeras al borde del abismo Yo caía descabellada encima de tu cuerpo Sobre las lunas llenas de tus pechos Esas tardes cuando se mecía el mundo con mi resuello Dos mujeres que hacían una sola sombra bailarina Esas tardes andábamos hasta que las lámparas Se prendían en las avenidas. ¿Volverán, Compañera, esas tardes  cuando nos amábanos?

Otherwise: the dark, and our bodies, two strange women trying to touch each other. Breathing strange. Moving toward and away from each other as the red ghost in the sky opened, called us gone, showed us the door to another world. Otherwise, the dark, and our mouths, tearing at what bones we found, grinning and hungry for something - something we couldn't, with all our words, name.

When Straight Women Flirt …With Me She sits on my lesbian lap both of us too much wine arm around my shoulder hair carelessly tossed from her face her full weight light upon me sweet sweat rising in the noisy night her laugh laps up the smoke her lean close her breathing flirts with mine small confessions of girlhood slumber parties spill out and into my ear long unspoken memories of pairing up with other girls to practice kissing she tosses excitement of kitten innocence in my face roller skate caresses first tastes of delicious shudder first caress and innocence innocence innocence only in a sense implication of guilt guilt guilt the unsaid in her sentence she tosses excitement her breathing breathless breathing breath breast breasts breasts breasts oh flirt with my around my shoulder lean close close close both of us taste too much too much to touch ankles thighs fingers ribs eyes ears toes her arm my shoulder my shoulder her arm alarm disarm dare me dare me dare me no harm my shoulder her arm my shoulder hold her fold her I never told her my small confession: I don’t practice kissing

It was good to be gay on Top of the Pops years before it was good to be gay in Parliament, or gay in church, or gay on the rugby pitch. And it’s not just gay progress that happens in this way: 24 had a black president before America did. Jane Eyre was a feminist before Germaine Greer was born. A Trip to the Moon put humans on the Moon in 1902. This is why recent debates about the importance of the arts contain, at core, an unhappy error of judgment. In both the arts cuts—29 percent of the Arts Council’s funding has now gone—and the presumption that the new, “slimmed down” National Curriculum will “squeeze out” art, drama and music, there lies a subconscious belief that the arts are some kind of . . . social luxury: the national equivalent of buying some overpriced throw pillows and big candle from John Lewis. Policing and defense, of course, remain very much “essentials”—the fridge and duvets in our country’s putative semi-detached house. But art—painting, poetry, film, TV, music, books, magazines—is a world that runs constant and parallel to ours, where we imagine different futures—millions of them—and try them out for size. Fantasy characters can kiss, and we, as a nation, can all work out how we feel about it, without having to involve real shy teenage lesbians in awful sweaters, to the benefit of everyone’s notion of civility.

তিনটি অঙ্কে চারজন সন্ত ঘাসের ওপরে পায়রা হায় । ঘাসের ওপরে পায়রা হায় । ছোটো বেশি বড়ো ছোটো বেশি বড়ো বেশি বড়ো বেশি ছোটো হলুদ ঘাস। পায়রারা বড়ো পায়রারা ছোটো বড়ো হলুদ ঘাসে হায় পায়রারা ঘাসের ওপরে । ওরা যদি পায়রা না হয় তাহলে ওরা কি ছিল । ওরা যদি ঘাসের ওপরে পায়রা ছিল না হায় তা্লে কি ছিল । লোকটা শুনেছিল একটা তৃতীয় আর ও জিগ্যেস করেছিল ওটা কি আকাশে কিচিরমিচির পাখি। যদি আকাশে কিচিরমিচির পাখি আকাশের ওপরে তাহলে কাঁদতে পারবে না যদি ঘাসের ওপরে পায়রা হায় আর পায়রাটাকে এড়িয়ে ঘাসের ওপরে হায় আর কিচিরমিচির পাখি আকাশে আকাশের ওপরে চেষ্টা করবে চেষ্টা করবে চেষ্টা হায় ঘাসের ওপরে হায় পায়রাটা ঘাসের ওপরে পায়রা ঘাসের ওপরে আর হায়। ওরা হহয়তো ভালো ওরা হয়তো ভালোই অনেক ভালো অনেক ভালো হয়তো হতে পারে। লুসিকে দাও লিলি লিলি লুসি লুসি দাও লুসি লুসি লিলি লিলি লিলি লিলি লিলিকে দাও লিলি লুসি লুসি দাও লিলি । দাও লুসি লিলি।

বাড়িটা চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল করছিল বাড়িটা চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল করছিল । আর তার মধ্যে ঝিলমিল করছিল আহ্লাদ, আমার খুকি উজ্বল । আহ্লাদে ঝিলমিল বাড়ির ভেতরে ঝিলমিল চাঁদের আলোর সঙ্গে, আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো উজ্বল, আ্‌লাদে ঝিলমিল আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো বাড়ির মধ্যে চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল। ওর প্রিয় বর উল্লসিত হতে ভালোবাসে যখন ভাবে আর সে সব সময়েই ভাবে যখন জানতে পারে আর সে সব সময় জানে যে ওর আশীর্বাদপুত বউই এখানে যাকিছু আর ও পুরোটাই ওর বউয়ের, আর তার সঙ্গে সেঁটে থাকে আশীর্বাদপূত খুকির মতন । যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম, পিকাসোর একটা সম্পন্ন প্রতিকৃতি আমি যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম। ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান হতেন নেপোলিয়ান হতেন হতেন ও পচন্দ করত। যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম । যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত ও কি পচন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । এখন । এখন নয় । আর এখন । এখন । ঠিক যেমন যেমন রাজারা । পুরোটা অনুভব করতে পারে । রাজাদের মতন হুবহু । তাই তোমাকে খোঁজা

And despite the punishments for boundary crossing, we continue to live, daily, with all our contradictory differences. Here I still stand, unmistakably "feminine" in style, and "womanly" in personal experience - and unacceptably "masculine" in political interests and in my dedication to writing poetry that stretches beyond the woman's domain of home. Here I am, assigned a "female" sex on my birth certificate, but not considered womanly enough - because I am a lesbian - to retain custody of the children I delivered from my woman's body. As a white girl raised in a segregated culture, I was expected to be "ladylike" - sexually repressed but acquiescent to white men of my class - while other, darker women were damned as "promiscuous" so their bodies could be seized and exploited. I've worked outside the home for at least part of my living since I was a teenager - a fact deemed masculine by some. But my occupation is now that of teacher, work suitably feminine for a woman as long as I don't tell my students I'm a lesbian - a sexuality thought too aggressive and "masculine" to fit with my "feminity.

No Language not only imagines a sexual politics as West Indian as the Caribbean Sea but also charts complex relationships between eroticism, colonialism, militarism, resistance, revolution, poverty, despair, fullness, and hope that explore the pliability necessary to imagine Caribbean same-sex loving politics differently, postcolonially. Myriam Chancy, in the first study of Brand’s poetry, writes her artistic vision as a rescripting of traditional poetics into poelitics: “A fusion of politics and poetry that recalls Lorde, who once wrote of the transformative power of poetry as ‘a revelatory distillation of experience’ and as an act of fusion between ‘true knowledge’ and ‘lasting action.’ ”8 Brand vocalizes quite lucidly the threat that this infusion of politics into poetics poses to both revolutionary and neocolonial Caribbean thinkers: “To dream about a Black woman, even an old Black woman, is dangerous even in a Black dream, an old dream, a Black woman’s dream, even in a dream where you are the dreamer,” she writes of reactions to her black lesbian feminist revolutionary artistic work by Marxists and conservatives alike. “Even in a Black dream, where I, too, am a dreamer, a lesbian is suspect; a woman is suspect even to other women, especially if she dreams of women.

আমি যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম। ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান হতেন নেপোলিয়ান হতেন হতেন ও পচন্দ করত। যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম । যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত ও কি পচন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । এখন । এখন নয় । আর এখন । এখন । ঠিক যেমন যেমন রাজারা । পুরোটা অনুভব করতে পারে । রাজাদের মতন হুবহু । তাই তোমাকে খোঁজা এরজন্য পুরোটা এর জন্য। অবিকল কিংবা রাজাদের মতন । আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর খোলা যেমন রানিরা । আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর আবদ্ধ আর তাই আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর আবদ্ধ আর তাই আর তাই আবদ্ধ আর তাই আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর তাই আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর আবদ্ধ আর তাই । আর তাই আবদ্ধ বন্ধ আর তাই আর সেই সঙ্গে । আর সেইসঙ্গে আর তাই আর তাই আর সেই সঙ্গে । হুবহু মিল হুবহু মিলের সঙ্গে হুবহু মিল হুবহু মিলের মতন ঠিক হুবহু মিলের মতন, হুবহু ঠিক তেমনিই মিল, হুবহু মিলে যায়, হুবহু তেমনই দেখতে হুবহুর হুবহু । কারন এটা তাইই। কেননা । এখন সক্রিয়ভাবে একে বারবার করো, সক্রিয়ভাবে সবকিছু বারবার করো, সক্রিয়ভাবে বারবার করো । বলেছি আর শুনেছি, সক্রিয়ভাবে বারবার । আমি বিচারকের বিচার করি । যেন তার মতন দেখতে । কে প্রথমে আসে । প্রথম নেপোলিয়ান । কে আরও আসে আসে আরও, কে ওখানে যায়, যেমন যেমন যায় তেমন ভাগাভাগি করে, কে সবকিছু ভাগাভাগি করে, সবই হয় সবই হয় এখনও এখনও ।

At real stripper bars women just dance—so many things they could be checking off their lists. I guess men don’t want to see women work? They get that at home? In my Champagne Room the butches plant bulbs, build bookshelves, clean basements, write checks to the ACLU, retrain your dog.

Being with girls is the same—it’s shameless and gritty, it’s not as soft as people make it out to be. It’s soft with men too. Even unknowingly, we diminish ourselves little by little to feel more loved. As girls, we don’t need to diminish ourselves when we’re together, we fit in every sense of the word. It doesn’t matter if we’re bruised, bloody, or empty, we become these things together—we fit.

My eyes widened and my face turned red as embarrassment gushed through my person. I had never thought of myself in such a manner. But now I knew the reasons I was sought after by dominant, bearded Arab men. I understood why I had the power to make men feeble in the knees and languid at my commands. Victor’s words that morning certainly took on a new meaning in my adolescent life. Before I could continue to bask in this glorious revelation, my teacher suggested, “Use your temporal assets wisely, or you may end up like many before you, in self destructive jeopardy.” I stared at him, speechless. “Pay attention, young man…” he proceeded slowly. “There are four basic homoerotic notions in Arab societies: * First, the acknowledgment of male beauty, even in other males’ eyes, and its capability of inducing ‘fitna’ (disorder). * Second, the recognition of the natural vulnerability of a grown man to be charmed by a handsome adolescent, to the point that mainstream scholars and theologians urged readers to resist the related temptation that follows this natural appreciation. * Third, the affirmation that love and passion exist hand in hand with related dangers - and not just sexual desires - that might be the driving force in a man-to-man attraction. * Fourth, and certainly not the least, the focus in classical literature and poetry on man-boy love, whereas grown male attraction is marginalized and regarded as mujun (ribaldry) or sukhf (obscenity).”               Señor Victor Angel Triqueros added, “No social definition of homosexuality existed in the Arab world during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. There was no native concept applicable to all and only those men who were sexually attracted to members of their own sex rather than to women. Therefore, no single word exists in Arabic to describe men engaging in same-sex relationships. But there is a categorization of sexual acts: language that uses such specific terms as liwat (anal sex), luti (active sodomite who prefers boys over women, ma’bun (passive sodomite), mukhannath (effeminate passive sodomite), mu’ajir (passive male prostitute), dabb (active sodomite who likes raping his victims in their sleep regardless of their age), musahiqa (lesbian), along with a string of others.

This is the time for the creative Man. Woman. Who must decide that She. He. Can live in peace. Racial and sexual justice on this earth. This is the time for you and me. African American. Whites. Latinos. Gays. Asians. Jews. Native Americans. Lesbians. Muslims. All of us must finally bury the elitism of race superiority the elitism of sexual superiority the elitism of economic superiority the elitism of religious superiority So we welcome you on the celebration of 218 years Philadelphia. America.

Harold Monro, with his Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street in Bloomsbury, was a mentor and inspiration. In 1913 he had turned an eighteenth-century house into a shop, publishing house and meeting place for poets and readers. At his own expense he published poetry and edited The Poetry Review. The shop was on the ground floor. The poet Amy Lowell called it a room rather than a shop. There was a coal fire, comfortable chairs, a cat and a couple of dogs. Offices were on the first floor, poetry readings were held on the second, and at the top were two attic rooms for poets and artists who needed cheap lodgings.

I returned to Denmark in 1975 and was part of a group trying to set up an international lesbian front. To my surprise all kinds of new lesbians were “coming out” of the women’s movement. Although we had wanted this to happen it was surprising when it did, and difficult to adjust to. I had known some of the women as heterosexual feminists and it was hard to accept them as the new experts on lesbian political theory. They seemed in some way to lack what I felt was a lesbian identity, though I was unable to analyse quite why. I went to a lesbian conference in Amsterdam, with women who didn’t know and couldn’t have cared that there had been one there ten years before, and how important it had been. I sought out some of the 1965 lesbians and found them now quite anti-political. “We can’t stand all these new lesbians,” they said, “they’re so negative.” I disagreed, of course, on principle, but somehow there was less joy in the air. Unemployment was starting to happen in Europe, political discussions seemed different, we talked more about rape and violence, about men and what they were doing to the world. We talked less and less about sisterhood until finally we didn’t talk about it at all, because none of us could really believe in it quite the way we had when the sun shone and it was always summer, and the whole world was poised on the brink of change. I asked one of the new lesbians to dance at a social after a meeting. Then I tried to kiss her, gently, as we had been doing for the previous five years. She pushed me away roughly and said I was behaving like a man. I felt hurt and didn’t understand. I got drunk in a corner with some twenty-year-olds, crying into the schnapps bottle and trying to explain to them that there was something happening now that wasn’t what I thought I’d fought to achieve. Something uptight, critical, rejecting. Something not quite— lesbian. I was only 35, but I was beginning to feel like an old woman of the movement. Most of the lesbians my age were not to be found in the lesbian movement. Many were back working in the mixed homophile organizations, now changing their names to associations of gay men and women. Or they were branching out to start women’s refuges, getting involved in the peace movement, active in the political women’s movement. I had moved to Norway and found that the only lesbian group I wanted to work in was called The Panthers, involved in social and cultural activites of lesbian poetry, discussions, and sing-alongs. I got involved with the Norwegian F48 and a huge split over Marxist-Leninist politics, which resulted in the formation of the Worker’s Homophile Association (AHF)— which turned out to be not at all marxist anyway. It all made for interesting political intrigues, but I grew tired and began working very hard so that I could spend part of each year back in Aotearoa/New Zealand. My work as a tour guide made saving money easy, especially doing lots of trips through the USSR, where there were few consumer temptations. I did, of course, and dangerously, search for Soviet lesbians whenever I could.

Cuando muera, Nemisa, te ruego no me llores, porque siento que soy inmortal como esa estrella que brilla, como ese sol, y como ese río que va corriendo silencioso bajo las frondas. Sé que Eustófena ha de volver algún día, cuando no existas ni tú ni yo, y empezará una nueva ruta, tal vez cuando no queden rastros de estas ciudades, y otros hombres vivan sobre la tierra. Para entonces, Nemisa, yo estaré en ti, y tú en mí.

Tuve miedo; sin embargo me entró el anhelo de olvidarte y de no serle fiel a Afrodita. Mas cuando los brazos de mi compañero rodearon mi cintura, sentí un dolor tan intenso, que preferí vivir con tu recuerdo.

Perdóname, Eufeba, voy a ver si te olvido, y si me es posible me haré como ellas que no aman a nadie, solamente esperan la caricia eventual del momento, tienen los ojos grises y el corazón de piedra.