Whitney Brennan

This piece was inspired by a passage from “The Speech of Phaedrus” by Carla Nappi. I was curious about the line, “And so from the beginning, the history of woman is the history of manipulation” (178B). I considered that manipulation is often meant to impose an ideological perspective onto another, such that they believe the ideas of their manipulator to not only be true, but to be of their own making. I imagined the women, shut out from the discussions of Eros and other forms of love, who would no longer grapple with the subjugation of their position, but would own it and claim their place as the witches, the crones, the oracles, the versions of themselves they had been made out to be by men.

How language is fraught with manipulation; if it is writ, it must have been so. I wanted to consider the inner monologues, the hushed curses and whispers of the women just beyond the door of the men’s conversations.

had we wished we were dead?
had we crowned ourselves kings
made us oracles
embalmed as trophies
offerings to no one gods

had we suffered at the hands of the ones who defied us
what then?
had we wished ourselves dead?

thrive in the decay
propagate in mulch
morph into twigs bees and worms

it’s their lives that are better wasted
their bones that are better ground into dust

why not wish them well (and dead)

so much like dried flesh
pungent
the cologne of a decaying rose
so much like the ashes of the women who burned

so much like memory
so much like devastation
so much like insubordination

[This piece is best listened to with headphones]