---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Queer-e- Vol. 1. no. 1 10. Molly Rhodes __________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 1995 by Author, all rights reserved. This text may be freely shared among individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the authors and advance notification of the editors of Queer-e. -------------------------------------------------- Like a Book - Fragments: A Dialogue * * * Note to Queer-e Readers: This is part of a longer experimental piece about lesbian desire & reading Sappho. It has multiple voices indicated by _underlining_ (Sappho) and CAPS (1920's U.S psychologist) * * * I thought I could read you like a book, but it turned out differently. It wasn't that way by any stretch of the imagination. We didn't speak the same language. Unbound, too many pieces, in no foreseeable order, parts buried. Not invisible, but all broken up. An old idea, an exchange, a doctor's prescription. An idea, a writing. A repeated resemblance, backwards, time driven. For her point of departure, she reconsiders her fear of reptiles, hearing how in Egypt they found mummified crocodiles with little rolled up pieces of Sappho inside them. Two or an odd number five bodies in a room, female. Speech exchanges, glances, embraces an indivisible fact, she says: What floats lighter than air or a flying Amazon? Think how much your head must weigh, the skull, hair and all the fleshed things inside it JAW SNAPPED SHUT LOST HER HEAD SCATTER BRAINED MY PETALS, HER FLOWERS, CLASSIC _scandle of this sort does not gravitate_ _towards a non-entity._ struck my fancy-- altho they're only breath words which I command're immortal. Next came the body wrapt sacred with her words on the inside, nearly there her prayer intact, swimming "O Aphrodite! Where're you now!" Slithered scithered hither either or in a cave, red lips, pieces of...in the desert fact scaled down the tears fell horizontal lines this way and that the evidence couldn't say if they made her bleed There like that she knew shoved into another form other volumes, not exactly what could be called "Realistic," eight disappeared while the rest of her the crocodile or body kept safe sacred for the Immortals. Maybe a purple flower or ribbon or tongue tasting sweat, sweetsalty. Sour, bitten smitten. Broken down, near by the ocean or the sea the lip red lense. Didn't need to touch the mummy's curse since her desire wasn't a museum piece. Shipped out, might as well leave now... _Too often a fragment_ _is only a single word. But I have omitted_ _nothing._ THE SACRED'S NOTHING THAT CAN'T BE VIOLATED. GOOD TO HER WORD. GOOD FOR IT, CAREFUL WITH IT. _sex_ _under the rule_ _of the normal and the pathological_ _a category of morbidity_ _defined--sex_ _defining meaning a necessity_ _from medical intervention_ _--the truth healed._ WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID: *Passion B. Subtle Behavior I. Illustrations a. The classic description of the subtler expressions of passion is contained in the "Second Sapphic Fragment." Sappho's descriptions of her own bodily expression of passion is remarkably accurate, from the psychological point of view: _For when I see thee but a little, I have no_ _utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and straightway_ _a subtile fire has run under my skin, with my eyes_ _I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours down_ _and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than grass,_ _and seem in my madness little better than one dead._ Sappho in the crocodile: I wrote my heart out. She appears to have eaten it all up, snapped in her trap. Consumed Writing. Couldn't speak a word to save my life, tongue-tied, paper-weighted to the mouth's bottom tissue twisted kleenex, gauze mouthed, I spat out fibers of the papyrus. What did she taste like? Well, let me tell you nothing like I'd ever...I thought I could read you... Like a book, dark grey purple smoke rang after the telephone. I talked to you, but she answered for me, and then, and after imitated your hung up voice in an act of mediation, protective description, making those kinds of seductive feminine noises that I never can reproduce without practice three times in a row. Mimetic arrogance. Rolled eyes, snorted truth: "It was like getting an obscene phone call from Greta Garbo!" WAS IT SIMPLY A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY? ZAP PO WHAT ABOUT THAT HERO WORSHIP OF A SLAVE OWNER? --"laughter" looks like "daughter" :under translation disintegration _in the middle_ _of the night of which we know nothing_ daughter : slave girl :: Psappho : ---------- HORIZONTAL EPIPHANY THE LESSON OF PARTS IN LITTLE ROLLED UP PIECES inside her? They recognized her in two ways: in shreads in other people's writings using the personas of goddess, mother, daughter, lover, slave, Homer DONT TALK W/ YER MOUTH FULL. _Myth_ ... _is a language_ _which does not want_ _to die: it wrests_ _from the meanings_ _which give it its substance_ _an insidious, degraded survival;_ _it provokes in them an artifical reprieve_ _in which it settles comfortable._ _It turns them into speaking corpses._ _the finest sight on this dark earth: what one loves_ WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID: *Passion. C. In a case recently brought to our attention, a modern young woman, meeting for the first time a handsome young person, reported that she experienced almost identically the bodily expressions of passion described by Sappho about 600 BC. The young woman had never read Sappho, as far as we could learn. "The continuous obsessive involvement with Sappho has been fueled by men and women of letters. Over the centuries, the poetess has served time and time again --more frequently than any other writer-- as the precursor against whom subsequent writers measure themselves." Annoyed at the intrusion of the image in memory of her body in a nightshirt. The memory is headless. WHAT FLOATS LIGHTER THAN AIR OR A FLYING AMAZON? "And here we need not confuse absence with distance and presence with proximity." What sort of body was underneath the long dried strips of cloth? Ossified, was she petrified when the crocodile ate her out in pieces, word by word, the lesson of parts? "Just wanted to be in touch." She on thursday pushed up a sleeve annoying her wrist all the way up to her shoulder SILK causing the widening of my eyes and the slowing of my breathing contradicted by the quickening OH HOW CLICHE IT ALL IS of my heart muscle at the sight of that fleshed limb let loose! SILK. Moved again. TONGUE what nerve makes BREAKS Invocated a familiar provocation of that sense of sensuality's nerve warming transmission tongue sliding down edging sideways biting a bare corner on the way out of an entry into a sticky situation She made that up, shedding crocodile tears to show that it was true TONGUE BREAKS while looking at the carnality of high heels I lived my life a loaded word phrase paragraph paratactic period end clause Just trying to catch your breath attention expiration date pirate ending DEAR DR. CAN YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT ON THIS DARK EARTH COMPELLED ME TO COVER OVER THE CROCODILE'S SKIN --MODELED IN A CERTAIN PRESCRIBED POSITION IN GREEN AND YELLOW PLASTIC IMPORTED FROM CHINA--IN IRREDSCENT MAGENTA NAIL POLISH? AND WHY COULDN'T I COVER OVER HER GREEN RIMMED BLACK EYES? WAS IT A PRIMORDIAL FLASH OF REALISM THAT ORDERED THIS BEHAVIOR? AND WHAT ABOUT WHAT I SHOVED DOWN HER THROAT, LITTLE ROLLED UP PIECES OF FORTUNE COOKIE FORTUNES INSIDE HER? PLEASE IDENTIFY THE TRUE MOTIVES BEHIND THIS BEHAVIOR. "Sappho is the lesson of parts Libraries you must do without because you are the book. WHAT FLOATS LIGHTER THAN AIR... LITTLE PIECES OF... LITTLE BETTER THAN ONE DEAD INSIDE HER "The sex which one catches unawares and questions and which restrained and loquacious at the same time endlessly replies" In rows of teeth in shadows where you lurk. Remember words that way Remember by words of mouth hearing her lips open, every hair howling. They found little rolled up pieces of Sappho inside them! Here she laughs until she cries, with or at or for or in the invented history of all the fragments. Giggled without explanation, necessary, releasing a finger-curled lock of unnaturally red hair, singing chorally, Sinnnnnnkingggg, she gave me that feeling-- Sank too proudly, is it male? Simply a matter of aesthetics? SHE WASN'T "Greek Love" SHE DIDN'T "care" Looks for relief. Runs her fingers over the edges, the top of the surfaces of for the senses with the crevices brought into high relief Ancient in the museum while the guard looked the other way. I thought I could read you... About the author: Molly Rhodes lives, writes and works in San Diego, CA. She juggles art with graduate school and labor organizing, and hopes the UC Regents will recognize her union before she files her dissertation, which includes a history of the comic book heroine WONDER WOMAN and is broadly concerned with intersections between mass culture, literature and psychology in the 20thc U.S. She likes to drive north to L.A. and giggle while passing the cities of Leucadia and Califia as frequently as possible. --------------------------------------------------------------------------