I was talking about political action with a class of mine
at Goldwater Hospital, a hospital for the disabled
in New York City.
And some of the people at the hospital who
knew the tram was going to be closed,
had gone and chained themselves and their chairs, and motorized
chairs to the tram.
And said, if you stop this tram, we can't get to Manhattan.
What are you going to do now?
And the news came, and everyone came
and the tram was now closed.
So when I was there, I said, let's do
a class on political action.
Who was there?
Tell me about it.
What happened?
And then let's all talk about what we've ever done,
or wanted to do or didn't do.
And in that class, I talked about something with them
that I had not remembered for a long time, the woman who
wrote this book.
May 1968, the dean of the university
said the neighborhood people could not
cross campus, until the students gave up the buildings.
So we lay down in the street.
We said, the cops will enter this gate over our bodies.
Spine down in the cobbles, hard bed like a carton of eggs.
I saw the buildings of New York City from dirt level.
They saw it up and stopped, chopped off cleanly.
Beyond them the sky, black and neither sour nor sweet,
the night air over the island.
The mounted police moved near us delicately.
Flat out on our backs, we sang.
And then I began to count, 12, 13, 14, 15.
I counted again, 15, 16.
One month since that day on that deserted beach when
we used nothing, 17, 18, my mouth fell open.
My hair in the soil.
If my period did not come tonight, I was pregnant.
I looked up at the sole of the cop's shoe.
I looked up at the horse's belly, its genitals.
If they took me to women's detention
and did the exam on me, jammed the unwashed speculum
high inside me, the guard's three fingers.
Supine on Broadway, I looked up into the horse's tail
like a dark filthed comet.
All week I had wanted to get arrested,
longed to give myself away.
I lay in the tar.
One brain in my head, and another tiny brain
at the base of my tail, and I stared at the world.
Good luck iron ark of the golden shoe, the cop's baton.
The deep curve of the animal's belly,
the building streaming up away from the Earth.
I knew I should get up and leave.
Stand up to muzzle level, to the height of the soft velvet
nostrils and walk away.
Turn my back on my friends in danger, but I was a coward.
So I lay there looking up at the sky,
black vault arched above us.
I lay there gazing up at God, at His underbelly,
till it turned deep blue and then silvery, colorless.
Give me this one night, I said, and I'll give this child
the rest of my life.
The horse's heads drooping, dipping,
until they slept in a dark circle
around my body and my daughter.
I'm hearing the bird calls of Arizona.