By Sue O’Sullivan
The self-deprecating sort
Fascination
How could I find the time?
Baby sucking all my energy
Body bedraggled
In drawings and photos they all look so free
Long wind-swept hair white hippy girls
Not me with a devoted husband
Married to stay in the UK
Not me and my sore cunt still smarting from stiches
Not me in London
Without my oldest and dearest friends
Here where making friends is a mystery
Not me finding my political, personal, emotional way
Fascination
War in Vietnam
The death count
Boys I knew in childhood dead
Vietnamese I never knew slaughtered
My loud American accent
I’m told I look so confident
In fact I’m
Dying a bit inside
Memories of the rest of my life
How does it all fit together? Does it all fit together?
How do I fit into it all?
Resistance
Wearing down
American friends talking about
Women’s Liberation
Perhaps I could perhaps I should
There’s a small group
Not that far away
Step a little closer
Close to where I live off Camden Road
After a summer in New York City
Baby in tow
After encouragement
‘It’s for all women. Go!’
(Ignorance is not bliss, it’s ignorance)
Eager talk about ‘our’ movement
About experiences in student groups, unions, the new left
Where the men, the boys so often confidently rose
Speaking, leading, demanding, assuming
Patriarchy not a word I know
After that summer I went one early autumn night
Rusty Morris Minor up Camden Road
Over to Tufnell Park
To Karen and Dave Slaney’s flat
Karen whose daughter Joanna was
Born in the same week as my first son
The rest is my history
From then til today
Women’s Liberation Resistance
Reprinted with permission from Write women into history, Hackney Howlers