Member Poem

“And though she be but little, she is fierce.” - William Shakespeare

I.

The telephone on the wall dates back to the early forties,

one of those black ones with a bell shaped receiver

and I can’t tell where you talk into it, or where you listen.

Lots of natural light pouring in from two windows overlooking

an abandoned, overgrown lot with a large tree right in the middle,

a closet where a Murphy bed used to hide its stories and stains,

plus a closet built for stashing bodies or brooms, you choose.

I laugh a lot as I tour the studio, amused at its antiquity

that hasn’t outgrown my tiny female body or destiny:

single female seeking a cheap studio apartment in a convenient location,

and this lifetime, I’m not alone. Another tiny woman looks at the studio,too,

and although we are competing for the unit, I feel love for her.  

As women, we are resigned to tiny apartments built decades ago,

even with all of the changes in our society, tiny women confined  

to a bathroom where changing a tampon becomes an acrobatic feat,

that closet where the murphy bed once lived a pop out office,

imagine it all.  Imagine tiny women dreaming of dollhouse lives

where they will easily rearrange their tiny furniture around big lives.

Imagine tiny women trying to expand themselves into the big world,

only to be made constantly tiny again by their ill-fitting studios,

cooking at a barbie stove, dressing in a closet for paper dolls.

This is the world I live in.  I used to think that people were tinier in the past,

but after being shown this studio apartment in a towering downtown antiquity

by two towering, smiling male managers, I come back to reality: tiny is my destiny.

II.

To compensate for my tiny size, I’ve started fitting more of myself into my imagination,

downsizing my possessions and status so I can grow and grow and grow.

If my needs are small, then any space will do.  If I am flexible, a simple room will do.  

I’ve no time to begrudge the towering men who remind me of my tiny size,

nor do I resent cleaning big houses. A prospective landlord told me

my cleaning jobs are little jobs, and so not stable enough, but oh! the legacy of being small--

my paternal grandmother cleaned houses by day, too, living in a converted one room schoolhouse

with a family of four.  She cleaned by day, read and wrote by night, submitting her work

both locally and nationally. A few pieces published, some of them preserved in a scrapbook.

If I am to be a tiny woman with tiny jobs like her, do not discredit my imagination.

Let me dwell in tiny spaces left over and refurbished for tiny women trying to get by

in this ever expanding world of big choices, big capital, big corporations.

Let me eat tiny food, let me wear tiny clothes, let me sleep in a tiny bed,

let me create big poems and paintings in a tiny room until I overflow it all

with my tiny destiny, again and again and again.

I am okay with tiny appearances, if it means my soul’s expansion

beyond a three room studio, my tiny home but a laughable antiquity,

my female soul never trusting a stable job or property to make it grow.