Surely it’s ridiculous maybe even scandalous
that I feel such overpowering envy
for the eleven-year-old son who’s dozing
fallen into his mother’s arms
to enjoy his turn of pleasure
however unaware and heedless.
At my age how could I compete
with that fine hair, that brow
which pulls back all the better to surrender
to the sure power of those hands
that close him in their caresses,
not lustful caresses but undisputed
sovereignty of simple tenderness,
the true sure gesture that possesses?
There’s no cure for my envy:
what do I want, to give or to receive?
To be what I am, yet not a female daughter
but a feminine son, an absolute son,
an undifferentiated son. Mother of mine,
what went wrong, why didn’t you convince me?—Patrizia Cavalli, from “Ten Poems” (translated from the Italian by Jonathan Galassi)
Art Credit Matt Saunders
“You know the fact that very small children make brilliant art and slightly bigger children, when they get slightly bigger, they can’t do it anymore?
Yes, it’s in part because they learn: this is how you draw a tree. This is how you draw a house. This is how you draw the sun. On the one hand,…
Studio portrait of delegate Ahahe, a Wichita woman, seated and holding a baby in cradleboard covered with checkered textile. Photographed at the U.S. Indian Congress of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, 1898.
Frank A. Rinehart, Non-Indian, ca. 1862-ca. 1928, or Adolph F. Muhr, Non-Indian, ca. 1858-1913
National Museum of the American Indian
