Camille Guthrie, "Diamonds"

Judith Butler, I am calling you

here in the kitchen where I’m unloading the dishwasher

performing my gender as I’m wont to do

My son yells from upstairs, How do you spell probably?

My daughter plays a game on my phone

caring for little green monster who needs a bath

I need to buy diamonds so her monster can sing

I need a sack of diamonds so I can work part-time

to take care of my kids and still eat when I’m old

performing my old lady tasks

I hope I’m yarn-bombing an embassy somewhere

Better start learning to knit or whatever

Knitting performs femininity, apparently

We need diamonds to afford my house

now that I’m a single mom

Conflict-free ones for a conflict-free life

To perform a single mom’s gender

is to need a chest of gold coins

and my life is easy I am not hungry

not beaten up working three jobs taking night classes

not ill without insurance I have a good job

I’m already leveled up! Got all my privileges

I’m not floating on a raft to escape war

not having sex with soldiers for food

my children are not digging for diamonds

we’re not being exploited in any way

Could Be Worse, that’s a book we love to read at bedtime, it’s by James Stevenson

It is, my son & I think, the plot to most movies It is I think the plot to most lives

I’m lucky, I get to teach you, Judith Butler to students who eat up your words like candyhearts

who return to the arms of their friends to dye their hair blue & fuck everyone & not shave and make manifestos & tweet witty protests who do drugs & sleep late & dance naked They seem so unafraid ahistorical dreamfull They stand outside the library smoking cigarettes as if we’re not going to die!

As if there aren’t books to read!

I have the greatest job in the world! Could be a lot worse

But I’m lonely in debt there’s no one to love me I’m feeling sorry for myself & guilty for all my luck Mutually-contradictory states of mind that’s what Shakespeare invented, supposedly

Gender, you say, is a performance continually created through citational repetition Daily rituals we put on again & then again as if we were born into a theatrical family putting on the same play that’s been going on forever

and there’s no way out, so says Foucault Michel, my turtle-necked darling, I love you even though you make me feel imprisoned And docile and subject to self-surveillance

Judith, Michel, I’m calling on you

I think I’m stuck in Hamlet

in the role of Queen Gertrude

but not at all royal I’m from Pittsburgh

because my son lashes out at me

He says I put my job before my kids

If I mention any man’s name

he says, I hate that guy

I asked him if he thought I was pretty

He said, Eh, you’re okay to good

He says he’d rather die than go to school

For his birthday he’d like a BB gun

My daughter spins in the living room to Rhianna

who has a pile of diamonds, probably

This little Ophelia talks to her Legos

and swims with waterwings

She wants to know if music is air

She says my butt jiggles when I walk

Yes, that’s it, I am a single Gertrude

in a little New England hamlet

Yet there are no louche kings to marry

no murderous uncles available round these parts

Yet in the porches of my ear has poured

the poison of the wish for Reliable Love

Marriage’s a prison Then is the world one

What I really want is someone not a husband

to perform the male gender around my house

I need help stacking wood putting the garden to bed

for the winter I need a man in my bed

It goes way below zero in the winter round here

The garage door is broken I don’t know how to fix it

Better learn to fix stuff or whatever

Like Gertrude, I am the Interpreter of the men around me

as I put snacks into little plastic bags

and so disciplined plan another playdate

I play the Assuager I’m afraid of being left with nothing for my future

No castle no bolthole on this dirty planet

No extra-small bag of gems

I have unappreciated skills, it’s true

I know how to do a close reading

I know where commas go

I can spot phallologocentrism miles away

in my cat glasses I’m laying it down

Yet I’m really terribly lonely, Judith

less lonely than Ophelia floating downstream clutching flowers and singing sad songs

I want someone to perform love on me Any kind of love any kind of role I don’t care but I want the real thing Real Love

to be a prisoner of Love, the songs say and to perform all the sex acts, too

I want a long masterful performance of that with repeat performances

<span style="color:#323232;">        Who’s there?
</span>

I am sitting here folding laundry on the couch

performing the pairing of the socks

In anxiety and pleasure, you say

And in the porches of my other ear

Pours the poison of the wish for diamonds

Could be worse

My daughter spins her own tornado

My son builds a house of diamond blocks

I want the curtains to part now

I want to be swept away