Its counsel can be sought after in these times when despair is easy and when the glistening trophy appears to be in the wrong hands. Her/his pronouns are not decipherable, not fixed – and s/he will not be countenanced in a single gaze. S/he pinches the sides of those who mourn, and haunts the comfort of the winners. S/he answers questions with queer questions that have nothing to do with the answer that is desired, and agonizes the luxury of linear justice. On the highway leading to the places of power she urges you to linger by the curb, where the otherwise sprouts like weeds.
S/he presses her/his ears to the loamy ground and beckons on you to hear the cavernous thrumming beneath. “You are so familiar with the way things ought to work that you are blind to the play that makes them work; you are so taken by the question of what you are to do now that you easily let slip away the recognition that you are already immersed in many doings that are not yours,” s/he intones. This is the feminism I know: the one that reaches for the guts and tears open wounds where things are hastily fixed; the one that uncovers foundations and points to a subterranean river in flow where pillars were meant to be; the one that knows there are other places of power.
