{"id":29,"date":"2015-12-05T16:30:37","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T16:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/?p=29"},"modified":"2015-12-05T16:37:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T16:37:40","slug":"art-response-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/2015\/12\/05\/art-response-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Hens, Each Clutching the Other’s Cloth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Hens, Each Clutching the Other\u2019s Cloth <\/strong><\/p>\n

before dust, you will be the woman
\nwith the large knife<\/p>\n

unnamed, hanging, loose on a tree limb
\nby your toes\u2014 a light sleeper,
\nthe first wife <\/p>\n

you will not be bounded,
\n a tiger mother, child
\n-less.
\nbehind the creaking she sleeps light<\/p>\n

your body, this floor, is a wasteland
\nyou tell time with your shadow
\nthough it is too tall and too curved
\ntoo wild for you
\nuntil the large knife.<\/p>\n

you will talk to her,
\nand she will make you know the burden of your empty belly <\/p>\n

you will be in the desert
\nknowing the aching of the childlessness
\nwhich is you,
\nand you will hear the creaking, and you will clutch her cloth
\nto make the creaking stop,
\ntoss it towards the dust <\/p>\n

you will feel the ground with her\/your tongue<\/p>\n

(the doctrine of the world is to kiss it)<\/p>\n

you will wonder what to name yourself
\nto be tiger mother, you must sacrifice all hopes of identity
\nSalamita, you will die unborn<\/p>\n

and newborn <\/p>\n

do you know what it means to be gone for a while?
\nthe creaking does not stop until the end of the dance
\nwhen you sleep on the floor<\/em><\/p>\n

Response: The title of this poem is a phrase I borrowed from an event in the book, The Suns of Independence. I chose to write a poem because I believed that the author\u2019s prosaic style throughout the book was so powerful. Throughout the poem, phrases are fragmented to illicit an uncomfortable pain for the reader \u2014 a sort of pain which was provoked, I believe, though the entire novel. I chose a scene which was perhaps not as gruesome and powerful as other scenes in the novel because I believe that the small action of two women fighting over room on the bed is such a pivotal point. I could have chosen the politics of genital mutilation or the socialization of rape or marriage to encapsulate the struggles of these women, but rather I wanted to further understand the moment wherein two women choose to fight against each other instead of uniting. I focused on the body, the floor, death, rebirth, and dance, because all these images seemed to act together in this scene in the novel. Everything, at least to me, seemed magical, and the best way in which I could interpret this scene was through poetry. I hope to show the feelings of isolation which plagued each woman, but at the same time, I wish to show sings of hope and love within the body, i.e. \u201cthe doctrine of the world is to kiss it.\u201d In writing this poem, I wanted for both the female characters to understand that they each have their own personal turmoils, but that most importantly, it is possible for them to work together. Of course, I don\u2019t think that this happened in the novel, and so I attempted to leave a little bit of ambiguity in the poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Hens, Each Clutching the Other\u2019s Cloth before dust, you will be the woman with the large knife unnamed, hanging, loose on a tree limb by your toes\u2014 a light sleeper, the first wife you will not be bounded, a tiger mother, child -less. behind the creaking she sleeps light your body, this floor, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7877,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmuhleisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}