You are built to pull a cart, to lift a heavy load and bear it, to haul up the long slope, and so am I, peasant bodies, earthy, solid shapely dark glazed clay pots that can stand on the fire.

Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out.

When midlist writers are treated like dirt, I would desist were I less stubborn and less committed.

I don't think writers change the past any more than other people do, except in so far as we may mine our lives and change things for fictional use.

I stayed under the moon too long.I am silvered with lust.Dreams flick like minnows through my eyes.My voice is trees tossing in the wind.I loose myself like a flock of blackbirdsstorming into your face.My lightest touch leaves blue prints,bruises on your mind.Desire sandpapers your skinso thin I read the veins and arteriesmaps of routes I will traveltill I lodge in your spine.The night is our fur.We curl inside it licking.

Purple as tulips in May, mauve into lush velvet, purple as the stain blackberries leave on the lips, on the hands, the purple of ripe grapes sunlit and warm as flesh.

In her bottled up is a woman peppery as curry, a yam of a woman of butter and brass.