Persona

I

Did I think I was a man
Because the pronoun "he"
Was talking about me?
No! I never swaggered and never
Tatooed dragons
On my smooth forearm.
But neither did I cripple my feet
With shoes pointed at toe or heel.
I ran, and didn’t mince
My step, or voice
Complaint about libraries
Filled with "he", when
Did they mean me?

I was a person, being
Human, a child –
Called "they" whenever gender was in question.
When someone’s hiding, children ask:
Where can "they" be?
Children know souls have no gender.

II

The pronoun "he" worried me
Some.
It wasn’t true, I knew, but too
It must be me
Books meant when they said "he".
Violinist Marion Thede wrote
"Every fiddler he" – did she
Feel like a curiosity, a lone
Woman
Fiddler
Wandering up dusty Oklahoma roads with her Fiddle Book
Under her arm,
Collecting tunes
In the ‘Thirties
As male fiddlers played? Or did she, like me,
See dancers and musicians
Packed in music halls
With all-human bands?
But what were fiddlers in ancient Rome?
Nero fiddled while it burned,
And pronouns illi and illae say
The Romans used the male plural "they"
If all the world were women,
Save one baby boy.

III

Maybe they should have called me "he"
One party night,
When thirty men laughed ‘round the fireplace
With fiddles, banjos held triumphantly,
While in the center was me.
Did I think I was "he" as I stomped and sang,
A lone woman
Fiddler,
While the women,
Wives,
Were calm, smiled
And whiled away the evening there
By the fire, feeding children
And men?

Maybe, I mused,
Cheeks glowing hot and lacking grace,
Maybe when they say "he"
They don’t mean me!
(I’d never heard them say "the hoedowner she"!)
Was I somewhere out of place?
Should I be skirted, full of grace
And skirt
Round the edge
Of vivid and vivacious?
Be a "calming influence", careful
Not to wrinkle my brow
In worry
Or my lips
In a snarl?
Where were the personae?
That night were only male, and female
And me.

IV

It seems everybody swaggers,
Or simpers.
There’s never a muscle-y giggle
Or a perfumed guffaw.
Our spirits are corseted,
Constricted by pronouns.
Women unmentioned
Become invisible – a world peopled
With "he’s"
And vapors.

1978

© 1978 Marian Drake, Salem, Oregon

"Poppy's Flowers"

(and other pungent observations)

Did you ever wonder what working conditions were like inside a shrimp processing plant on the Oregon Coast in the 1970s? Poppy's essay puts you right in the room.

How do you feel when a Bigwig puts you down? And what did it feel like to be a woman in the 1970s before many gender-speech freedoms were realized? How can a patchwork quilt tell the poignant story of growing from girlhood to young womanhood, and from adulthood to very old age, in the 1940s and 50s? What shocking dangers of a possessive and intrusive parent may be discovered in a story-poem about music and a New Orleans wake?

Poppy has collected many of her earlier writings in this thoughtful, but hard-hitting, 22 page volume. Titles are: Picking Shrimp; Patchwork; Persona; Why?; Mister Bigwig; those civic planners who knead our formless souls; The Columbine and the Crabgrass; Poem (about chickens and cats); and Ouch!

Order from:

Marian Drake
$10.00 (includes postage and handling) check or money order only.

This book is presently sold out, and is available by special order. When I get 5 orders, I'll make another printing.

503-236-6082
postcards@hevanet.com
Portland Postcards

Who is Poppy?

"Poppy is my poet," says author Marian Drake, EdM.

Poppy was born in the late 1970s which is when Drake's creative writing came back to her, after a 20 year hiatus. Poppy writes poems and emotional essays. Just as every poppy flower is like a beautiful poem, Poppy's poems just "pop up," and pop out of some mysterious design or plan that drives her to write. When the conditions are right, poppy flowers bloom, and Poppy's writings become her Flowers.