"Philomela’s Tapestry" and "Trembler," posthumously published poetry by Karen Kotrba
from the unpublished book of poems Victoria Woodhull: More Than a Footnote
Philomela’s Tapestry Men may shout but we women tune our ears for nuance. We hear words beyond words, discern the no behind the yes. We study the shift in the chair, the hand trembling at the mouth, the inappropriate laughter. We decode, and we are teaching ourselves to speak. Men dig through dictionaries, but women know words uninvented. The uncoined phrase is our first language. We’re no nightingales trilling our laments, nor do we toil at looms to weave our stories. Our tongues are intact, and we have learned to speak. Trembler The merest of stirrings, a tickle in your stomach. It stops. Then it’s back, bigger. How would it feel to swallow a sparrow, its panicked fluttering inside you? Then larger still, like an infant’s quickening. An urgent, insistent knocking against your ribs. But no, it’s not you. It is the world, the earth undulating, unreliable. Wide-legged, you ride. It stops. “What was that?” a friend beside you asks. Comes the answer: “That’s San Francisco. Now and again, it happens.” Hear me, America: I am that rumble, here to rattle old into new, shake wrong into right. I will shudder the world off its axis.