Women Obscure in Their Labour

Took a whole (Super) Tuesday off homework to watch the Inaugural Address, and wrote this kind-of response to it. This is still pretty rough, but I'm not thinking I'll have much time to work on it in the near future.

I guess this, like a lot of my work, is concerned with gender and what it is and why it is. And obviously, I'm coming at it from a feminist perspective - I consider this a feminist blog, really - but even the definition and principles of feminism are difficult and often contradictory. This isn't necessarily a criticism: I am a feminist, and I expect most good people are. Whether they identify as "feminist" or not is another issue, and because of some really pathetic stereotypes, lots of young women don't. 

I don't know what point this poem is trying to make, exactly. It's all a little bit vague and celebratory or something. Also, if you Google the title, its relevance should become apparent. 

Enjoy.

Women Obscure in Their Labour

 

The inauguration comes

one month before my eighteenth birthday

along with day-late prickling of cramps.

My mother is in the city

and the girls from school sign out

to apply for university before the deadline.

 

At home, I switch the television on and

watch thousands of tiny flags blur into pink

and my best friend texts me:

“things are changing today”.

 

This is not a love poem

unless it is for her, or for myself,

for the trumpet players, flag-wavers

swaddled in coats and badges

for Nancy, Hillary and Michelle

for those who watch this in London

dreaming of home and for those who

watch at home, dreaming of Washington

for this flush restless fertility

which is both mine and not mine

or somehow shared because in this

hope – and there is hope –

we all are bound together, each to each.