Sometimes....

...I think that wimmin/feminists misunderstand the potential of this poem.

Sometimes I fear that what a woman who is feminist yet fearful, self doubting, hesitant and prone to avoiding might get out of this poem is permission to avoid speaking clearly, forthrightly and truthfully.

She might find space to avoid dealing with ethical, political, social situations where oppression is occurring even though folks who are witnessing it all know better. She might just cheups her mouth and say she's tired of being a bridge and tell herself she doesn't have to say or do anything at all.

I read this poem differently. I read it as in invitation for a woman, a feminist to come into full power, full voice, not in relation to or in reaction to anyone or any family or any relatives or any community, not as a bridge leading away from herself.

I understand this poem as an invitation for a woman/feminist to come into full power while worrying less about the standards or values of others, using her own standards and values to increase her own journeying, exploring and challenging potential.

I see this poem as an invitation to be a bridge into mySELF so as to become stronger and more insightful in order to more effectively make change in the world around me.

I see this poem as a recipe anyone of any gender can use to discover what lies inside rather than always focusing on what other people might want for us, might want us to be or do or say.

I can't stand it when folks who want to hide and run and avoid and deny while still presenting as radically politicized utilize ovarian texts, citing them in order to aid in distinctly a-political, undermining agendas.

The Bridge Poem

by Donna Kate Rushin

From This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
by Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua
New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983.

I’ve had enough
I’m sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father
my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother
my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks
the Black church folks to the ex-hippies
the ex-hippies to the Black separatists
the Black separatists to the artists
the artists to my friends’ parents…

Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
the isolation of your self-imposed limitations

Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners

Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches

Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your humanness

I’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

I must be the bridge to nowhere but my true self. And then I will be useful.

I have been doing this. And so, I understand myself to be useful. :)