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    AC Benus
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 56. ...I'm sick of it...

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The Bridge Poem

 

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 human-ness

 

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 you 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

—Kate Rushin, [i]

1981

 

 

 

 

 

 


[i] “The Bridge Poem” Kate Rushin This Bridge Called My Back (Bath, Somerset, 1981). Reprinted in Gay and Lesbian Poetry in our Time [Carl Morse / Joan Larkin, Editors] (New York 1988), ps. 350-352

_

as noted
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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84Mags

Posted (edited)

Whoa, I needed this poem in my 30’s! I’ve got it covered now and am firm in my convictions but this really does sum up a couple decades of my life.  

Edited by 84Mags
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2 minutes ago, 84Mags said:

Whoa, I needed this poem in my 30’s! I’ve got it covered now and am firm in my convictions but this really does sum up a couple decades of my life.  

Thanks, 84Mags. There are many spectacular lines in this poem. Useful ones like "Find something else to make you legitimate" and "I'm sick of mediating with your worst self."

Thanks for your comment and support :)

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This poem reminds me of how many connections we make for one another. Some bridges are busier than others. Rushin was indeed a very busy bridge, and this poem can’t help but express her frustration. 

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22 hours ago, Parker Owens said:

This poem reminds me of how many connections we make for one another. Some bridges are busier than others. Rushin was indeed a very busy bridge, and this poem can’t help but express her frustration. 

Thanks for your comment, @Parker Owens. Rushin's voice is an important one. Her poem here starts a small series where I'll post things from the African American point of view in both the poetry and prose editions of the Great Mirror.

Thanks again :)

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