To the American Psychiatric Association – 1973

Jewelle Gomez

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To the American Psychiatric Association – 1973
Jewelle Gomez

I woke this morning
no longer crazy.
No difference in the mirror just
a breath slipping from me
soft as a bird in flight

I’d gone to bed uneasy in my madness,
the burden of perversity an unstable pillow.
The lover at my side lies
restless with her diagnosis too.

The symptoms thrust like shadows
across the wall of a top floor room,
concealing themselves in the
density of light.

I heard voices, disembodied
rising like smoke from the wood
stacked tight at the bottom of a stake.

Visions, seditious things
that were not there: a woman
with her hand in another’s,
gripping firmly, holding on for life;
me inside a golden window light
with others. Always others.
Clad only in diaphanous silks
Or thick binding layers
we screamed obscenities at passersby
cataloguing imagined inequities:

Anti-social, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchy,
Anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist,
Anti-establishment
even when they strapped
my arms to my sides
and claimed I was incurable.

Then I woke this morning,
no longer just that crazy lesbian
footnoted in the texts.
But a feminist who’s still quite angry.

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Biography:

Jewelle Lydia Gomez (born September 11, 1948) is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women’s experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.