Abortion is violence; a deep, desperate violence inflicted by a woman upon, first of all, herself.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we're not young.

For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.

Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.

...you look at me like an emergency