Sinister Wisdom 99: Pleasure

By Sinister Wisdom

Sinister Wisdom 99: Pleasure begins the calendar year 2016, which marks Sinister Wisdom’s fortieth publishing anniversary. On July 4, 1976, Harriet Desmoines and Catherine Nicholson published the first issue of Sinister Wisdom, welcoming into the world a lesbian journal to celebrate the many sinister wisdoms of lesbians. Sinister Wisdom 99: Pleasure showcases new and returning writers to Sinister Wisdom. One of my pleasures is publishing our beloved lesbian-feminist writers, like Kitty Tsui and Cherry Muhanji, as well as newer writers like Denise Miller, Allison Berry, Sarah Neal, and many others. In this issue, you will find an array of incredible lesbian and queer writers. Curl up with these words from lesbian writers, with these sparks of lesbian imagination, for your own pleasure and discovery. When you are done reading, share it with a friend. I know every page in Sinister Wisdom 99 will bring you pleasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sinister Wisdom
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944981143

Sinister Wisdom

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal that publishes four issues each year. Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian space. Sinister Wisdom seeks to open, consider and advance the exploration of lesbian community issues. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgment as lesbians evaluating our community and our world.

Book preview

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Table of Contents

Notes for a Magazine

Kitty Tsui

don’t call me sir, call me strong

don’t let them chip away at our language

Bev Jafek

On Seeing

Sarah Kai Neal

My Vibrator Doesn’t Whisper

Carol Potter

Falling in Folds

Jen Cross

Emergence

Curious

Maureen Daniels

Last Ferry

Cherry Muhanji

Lulu’s Pleasure Palace

Susan Levinkind

Drama Club

Allison Berry

How To Be Gay In Missouri

Melissa Buckheit

Going Out of the Gate

On the Body’s Surface as It Dissolves

Nancy Kline

In the Garden

Alyson Lounsbury

How To Love Me

Courtney Hartnett

Screen Narratives

Dirge

Animus

Carla Stern

Tilt Test

Laura Foley

Deep in the Woods

Denise Miller

How to Locate Yourself in Your Own Backyard

Jeri Hilderley

The Alphabet Wedding

Suzanne Carroll-La Follette

A Dyke Like Me

The Body Unknown

Nancy Klepsch

Rubylith as a Revolutionary

Sylvia Byrne Pollack

Coda

Book Reviews

Contributors

Advertisements

Notes for a Magazine

Sinister Wisdom 99: Pleasure begins the calendar year 2016, which marks Sinister Wisdom’s fortieth publishing anniversary. On July 4, 1976, Harriet Desmoines and Catherine Nicholson published the first issue of Sinister Wisdom , welcoming into the world a lesbian journal to celebrate the many sinister wisdoms of lesbians.

Since 1976, an extraordinary group of editors, guest editors, writers, contributors, artists, and volunteers have labored to make Sinister Wisdom happen. Sinister Wisdom continues as physical journal, recognizing the importance of lesbian embodiments in the world as a way to assert lesbian space and lesbian significance. Sinister Wisdom publishes regularly to mark the consistency of lesbian life—even as historical conditions change. Sinister Wisdom is mailed regularly to subscribers and shared hand to hand in lesbian spaces across the United States and around the world. Our reach into lesbian imagination is mighty. I salute everyone who has given part of herself to Sinister Wisdom over the past forty years. Thank you for bringing us to this place, our fortieth anniversary year.

The best way to celebrate Sinister Wisdom’s achievement and endurance for forty years is to publish more amazing work. I have four fantastic issues of Sinister Wisdom planned for 2016. You do not want to miss a single one.

This issue, Sinister Wisdom 99: Pleasure showcases new and returning writers to Sinister Wisdom. One of my pleasures is publishing our beloved lesbian-feminist writers, like Kitty Tsui and Cherry Muhanji, as well as newer writers like Denise Miller, Allison Berry, Sarah Neal, and many others. In this issue, you will find an array of incredible lesbian and queer writers. Curl up with these words from lesbian writers, with these sparks of lesbian imagination, for your own pleasure and discovery. When you are done reading, share it with a friend. I know every page in Sinister Wisdom 99 will bring you pleasure.

In April, I will publish Sinister Wisdom 100, our fourth Sapphic Classic. The Sapphic Classic series is one of Sinister Wisdom’s commitments to keeping lesbian writing visible and available for new generations of readers. Sinister Wisdom 100 is The Complete Works of Pat Parker. Sinister Wisdom 100 will mail in April and be a thick book. Look out for it. Sinister Wisdom 101 will publish on July 4, 2016, the exact fortieth anniversary of the first issue of Sinister Wisdom coming off the presses in North Carolina. Sinister Wisdom 101 gathers more new and exciting lesbian writing—and looks back at our forty years of publishing. Finally, Sinister Wisdom 102 will be a special issue celebrating the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. An amazing collective has come together for this issue, and I am thrilled to present it during our anniversary year.

Is reading lesbian literature one of your pleasures? Is writing one of your pleasures? Does the concatenation of lesbians and language bring you pleasure? If so, foreground pleasure in your life this year! Consider volunteering and help with Sinister Wisdom’s publishing and literary work. Renew your subscription and give a gift subscription—or two!—to others who will get pleasure from the journal. Make a charitable gift to support the work of Sinister Wisdom. We need you to invest in the future of Sinister Wisdom to keep us publishing for the next forty years.

Cherry Muhanji ends her wonderful story, Lulu’s Pleasure Palace, with this line: . . . somebody is singing, and I am everywhere these stories are told . . . . If you listen, everywhere lesbians are singing. Everywhere lesbians are telling their stories. Together, let us ensure that Sinister Wisdom is everywhere lesbians sing and tell our stories.

In sisterhood,

Julie R. Enszer

January 2015

don’t call me sir, call me strong

Kitty Tsui

i get called sir

all the time.

by women, by men.

waitresses in restaurants,

sales clerks behind counters,

stewards on board planes.

it’s the short hair

that sets them off.

or maybe it’s because

i stand tall,

have a wide stance,

broad shoulders

and thick forearms.

or perhaps

it’s my wristwatch,

made for a man.

i get called sir

all the time.

i even get cruised

by men in the Castro

out looking for fresh meat.

i suppose it’s because

i have small breasts,

big fists,

walk with hands in pockets,

stand tall

with a wide stance,

broad shoulders

and thick forearms,

i’m taken for a man.

it’s time to talk back.

hey, don’t call me sir,

call me strong

call me sassy

call me sober

call me spirited

call me sure-of-myself

call me competent

call me confident

call me powerful

call me proud.

don’t call me sir,

call me strong.

call me

woman who walks

with a long stride,

woman with small breasts,

big fists,

hands in pockets,

standing tall

with a wide stance,

broad shoulders,

thick forearms

and wears a man’s watch.

don’t call me sir, call me strong.

call me shooting star,

call me sea,

call me wave upon wave,

call me womb,

call me woman.

a strong woman sighing,

a sassy woman loving,

a sober woman laughing,

a spirited woman working,

a sure woman singing,

a competent woman rejoicing,

a confident woman crying,

a powerful woman chanting,

a proud woman coming.

a proud woman

coming in to herself.

don’t let them chip away at our language

Kitty Tsui

haa-low, oh-kay

dank que, gut-bye.

the only words

my grandmother knew.

the only words of English

she spoke

on a regular basis

in her rhythm of

city Cantonese

mixed with

Chinatown slang:

Dupont Gai,

low-see beef,

you good gal,

sic gee mah go,

sic apple pie,

yum Coca-Cola.

a few proper nouns

were also part of

her vocabulary.

my name, Kit-tee,

San-Fan-see-co,

Sa-fu-way,

where she would

stock up on

rolls of toilet paper,

sponges and Ajax,

on sale, of course.

in the spring of 1985,

a Republican assemblyman

in California

proposed a bill

to make English

the official language

of the state.

his rationale:

we’re no longer

going to let them

chip away at our language.

if they can’t

understand English,

they shouldn’t be here

at all.

we first came in 1785,

three seamen

stranded in Baltimore.

later we were

merchants and traders,

cooks and tailors,

contract laborers hired

to work in the mines,

in construction,

in the canneries,

on the railroad.

hired to do

what no man would:

hang from cliffs in a basket,

endure harsh winters,

and blast through rock

to build the iron horse.

we became sharecroppers,

growing peanuts,

strawberries,

cabbage, chrysanthemums.

opened restaurants

and laundries.

worked in rich homes,

on ranches and farms,

tending stock,

cleaning house,

cooking and ironing,

chopping firewood.

composing letters home,

dreaming of a wife,

a son.

we are tong yan,

American-born

and immigrants,

living in L. A.

Arizona,

Brooklyn and the Bronx,

San Mateo and the Sunset.

we eat burgers and bow,

custard tarts and bubblegum.

we drink espresso and boba.

we are doctors, actors,

alcoholics in recovery,

artists, carpenters,

office workers,

iron workers,

maids and teachers,

gay and straight.

we speak in many tongues:

sam yup, threy yup,

street talk,

the Queen’s English.

please don’t let them

chip away at our language.

On Seeing

Bev Jafek

It’s that light, Ruth was thinking as she drove. The soft white light of southern Spain that seems to exist as waves, oceans of white washing over you. The heat is part of it – we’re just past the first of June. It must be over 100 degrees. The inevitable sense of being overwhelmed, becoming white wave-like ephemera, the world scaled almost to zero. I remember the bright white light of San Francisco: what a contrast. It was sparkling, cool and brisk, a perfect city to work in, to create durable, utilitarian things used for good purposes. Eternal Spring, it roused you to change your life like a musical refrain. This light is the reverse, utter passivity, pure being. How we need both. White will be the last color I see when I die.

You could not paint it other than in broad white strokes, Sylvie was thinking, an entire canvas of red and black and those thick white strokes across the center. If any landscape or human figure is necessary, it must be no more than an outline, a fast brush stroke over the canvas in a single thin line of gray paint. As a conceptual painting of Spain – here, now – this idea intrigues me.

They passed two riders on horseback followed by a faint, tiny foal with glassy eyes. They smiled in pleasure at the foal’s diminutive sweetness. One of the horses must be a mare, its mother, Ruth said. It looks no more than a week old. It will follow its mother anywhere.

It’s adorable, said Sylvie. How I would love to kiss that funny, rumpled new fur, she thought.

They had just decided to drive to Barcelona before Madrid, visit a few cities along the way – Seville, Granada, Ronda and whatever else took them – then head up the Costa del Sol. They were in agreement that they needed a rest and nothing should hurry them. Are we tourists yet? Sylvie asked.

Not yet, said Ruth with a smile. We’re still in the thrall of art. Your head must be completely empty. We may never be tourists again as long as we live. A red tractor with a huge shovel and a laughing young man at the wheel passed them. The shovel held a laughing young woman. I wonder how that happened, they thought with a smile.

I haven’t told you yet where we’re staying in Barcelona, Ruth said with sudden energy. "We’ll be at