TRANSFORMATION
Transformation is a poem about breaking out of oppression. My interpretation of gender in the quote and in the piece revolves around my personal experience of navigating the world as a woman. I wanted to explore the idea of women feeling like monsters for having desires, for speaking up, and for craving freedom.
“Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a … divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.” Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa
It’s humid, she thinks.
She waits a few seconds,
before turning to her husband.
“It’s humid”, she says.
He grunts. Flips the page
of his newspaper.
Mindlessly bites into his toast.
A sound coils around the house,
thick and brutal.
She knits her brow,
moves to the window.
It’s the same old view outside,
lawns trimmed to plastic perfection,
houses regimented in line,
women buzzing around like
dutiful cogs.
What’s that sound? She thinks.
She waits a few seconds, before
she turns to her husband.
“What’s that sound?”
He grunts, flips, bites.
Do you ever listen…
“Do you ever listen to a word I say?”
Her voice shatters the stillness
with its hard edge.
“Or do you only listen to
that fucking newspaper?”
His jaw drops.
She stares.
He stares.
Her head jerks.
She looks down.
Her body shivers, ripples beneath,
a nightmare metamorphosis.
Skin hardens to scales,
hands twist to talons,
shoulders sprout gnarled protrusions.
She screams…
…squawks.
He shoves his chair back,
stumbles,
presses against the wall.
She savours the terror in his eyes,
she stalks, prowls,
he cowers, whimpers.
She looms over him,
“Do you hear me now?” She growls.
But he only hears a squawk.
She lumbers to the door,
crashes through it,
feels the sun on her scales
and the wind in her fur.
She can taste it,
what was kept from her.
Her birthright.
Her freedom.