The Woman from the Krasny Perekop Textile Mill
Original archive entry. The text, images and links below are kept as they were written.
Poem: traditionalists always fear women who fly...
traditionalists always fear women who fly
the hooded finger pronounces the sentence:
witch
enflamed
leering eyes menace:
meet your match
& the manne at the bar counter
grouse: just because we name you
goose chick bird
doesn't mean you should take off, hey?
only when a suffragette flew at the king's horse
& her sisters touched down in parliament
could
Raymonde de Laroche
Amelia Earhart
dance with the sky
from Caroline Herschel to Carolyn Shoemaker
from Maria Mitchell to Patricia Whitelock
it was tough for angels to touch the stars
Valentina Tereshkova
Worked up a new tapestry
With weft of silk of parachutes
& the warp of skies
first
but the seagull allowed to soar only once
Sevetlana Savitskaya welded her colours to the mast
& her voice to the Duma
Sally rode the heavens
lit the eternal flame remembering
Judith Resnik
for whose devotion the sky exacted sati
Mae Jemison
raised our colours, saluted Bessie Coleman
Helen Sharman
commuted from a Mars factory to earth orbit
& Shannon's lucid e-mail
beckoning Heike Walpot
up from her Lufthansa joystick:
"the stars are always brighter
on the other side of the hatch."
--Keith Gottschalk