I had a lot of feelings about Kavanaugh being confirmed and what’s been happening to women and how we’re letting little girls down. It’s a cocktail of anger, frustration and pain so I wrote a poem.
If you feel inclined, please share it!
Sending love and strength to anyone who needs it x
Wu Zao (or Wu Tsao) is considered one of the great female poets of China, and one of the greatest lesbian poets of all time. Very little of her work has been translated into English, but the most beautiful translations are the handful by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung (the above being the best of the bunch, IMO).
Born in 1799, Wu Zao was the child of a merchant, and married to a merchant (in an arranged marriage, naturally). Both relationships are believed to have been unhappy. There were no literati in either family, and no one knows how she learned to read, write, play music and paint, since women of the merchant class were rarely taught these skills. A common dictum in the era was “A woman without talent is a virtuous one.” She basically said, “Fuck that noise,” and became a productive and talented poet, playwright and composer; one of the few female writers of the period. She used her writing to express her longing to break away from a traditional view of women’s roles, including an opera about a woman who cross-dresses and paints her own self-portrait, while lamenting her inability to use her talents because she is a woman and the gender roles of the era are stupid.
Her work was highly praised by poets and scholars, and her songs were sung all over China. She hobnobbed with other great artists of the age, both male and female. In her middle years she retreated from the world and became a Taoist priestess. (Or a Buddhist one, depending on who you ask). She died in 1863.
It’s clear from her poetry that she had sexual and romantic relationships with women, but apart from the short biography by Rexroth and Chung in their book Women Poets of China, it’s impossible to find a biography in English that does more than hint at her lesbianism. According to them, she had many female friends and lovers during her life, and wrote erotic poems to several courtesans, including this one. After reading it, I like to imagine her and Ch’ing Lin hanging out in her bedroom, painting each each other’s eyebrows and making out, like some kind of 19th century Chinese version of a sexy high school sleepover.
[Translation from Women Poets of China by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung; biographical information primarily from Women Poets of China, The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry and The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women].
[image description: page with the poem “For the Courtesan Ch’ing Lin” from
FOR THE COURTESAN CH’ING LIN To the tune “The Love of the Immortals”
On your slender body Your jade and coral girdle ornaments chime Like those of a celestial companion Come from the Green Jade City of Heaven. One smile from you when we meet, And I become speechless and forget every word. For too long you have gathered flowers, And leaned against the bamboos, Your green sleeves growing cold In your deserted valley; I can visualize you all alone A girl harboring her cryptic thoughts. You glow like a perfumed lamp In the gathering shadows. We play wine games And recite each other poems. Then you sing “Remembering South of the River” With its heart-breaking verses. We both are talents who paint our eyebrows. Unconventional as I am, I want to possess the promised heart of a beautiful woman like you. It is spring. Vast mists cover the Five Lakes. My dear, let me buy you a red painted boat And carry you away.
she tells me that cliche again about van gogh and his yellow paint. she says i’m an artist like that. i’ll find my yellow paint. my salvation. how i scoop out hope.
i want to tell her i already have. the ugly things i shove inside myself trying to find happiness even if it kills me. my yellow paint has been entire cakes, has been sixteen shots, has been strangers i kissed and forgot, has been eating too healthy, has been eating nothing at all, has been dark nights i swaddled myself in, has been speeding on black ice, has been everything i could think of that would make me feel anything at all for once in my life. i wonder if i die like this they’ll say it was beautiful. they’ll talk about the poet who used the sharpest things in her life to carve the joy out of herself – they’ll say, oh, she knew it was toxic but she wanted to put the happiness inside of her again. she ate only captain crunch because it reminded her of her childhood, isn’t that so cute? well obviously it’s sad she’s dead but how romantic is it that she loved birds and flowers and once debated eating poison. how will they paint my ending. she unbuckled herself on highways because she wanted to be one with the sky. she refused to look before crossing the road because she believed in fate. she was a wonderful girl and will be missed while we wear socks with her face on them. van gogh ate yellow paint. we say he was trying to put the good back into him. but i’ve eaten until i feel sick. i’ve slammed myself against the ground trying to get death to stick. i know what self harm is when i see it.
“women don’t know how much rejection hurts” i wasn’t allowed to play with legos or touch a football or look at sports. i wasn’t allowed to eat more. i wasn’t allowed to talk loudly, to laugh too much, to inject myself into male conversations. i wasn’t allowed to be good at science. i was told “oh sweetheart, have another college in mind, STEM fields are hard.” i got turned down from jobs in favor of boys where were less qualified. one boss told me he was hesitant to hire me because my last name is hispanic and i’m pretty and he didn’t want the “controversy.” i couldn’t take up space on the train. i would be talked over in public places. i couldn’t eat steak or drink beer, they were “boy” things. video games were off limits, i wasn’t allowed to ask if i could see more characters like myself in them. super heroes were all men, women were just love interests. i wanted shirts with wonderwoman, with black widow, with harley quinn, i found next to nothing. i wanted pockets and colors other than pink and clothes designed for warmth, not sexy, i got nothing. women change their name to be published nationally. i wasn’t allowed to be emotional, i wasn’t good at driving, i wasn’t in charge of my own body. i wasn’t allowed to show off my body, i wasn’t allowed to dress modestly. i had to be pretty, whatever it took, but my eating was constantly made fun of. “she’s, like, anorexic” was a punchline, not a disorder. “she’s fat” was a death sentence.
boys said no because: i wasn’t pretty i wasn’t small i was too loud i spent too much energy on being funny on because i wouldn’t shut up what a feminazi i wasn’t smart i was too smart for my own good i was always reading i was always busy i was too needy i was too independent i was not who you took home i was too much of a house mom i was perfect and it was scary.
women don’t know. women don’t know. never sat in a room and wrote angsty poetry about this shit. somehow both overemotional and not capable of knowing how much rejection stings. which one is it. which one is it. i’ll give you a hint: we’ve been rejected since the first time our parents said, “no, not the blue blanket, it’s for little boys to play with.” we are used to having “no” slammed in our faces. we got used to it. maybe the reason it seems so unnatural to hear “no” is because for your entire life, you heard “yes.”
“maybe the reason it seems so unnatural to hear ‘no’ is because for your entire life, you heard ‘yes.’”
Question of Smoke 