Body of Knowledge Burning

How have words written you?

I’m a woman of words — is that a contradiction in terms?

If I prefer the company of books to the company of men, does that make me a modern-day witch? Does the time I spend alone with books threaten the machinations of misogyny? For if I’m reading, I’m not cooking or cleaning for a man, not tending to children or chores (lazy / slattern /slovenly).

Indulging in occasional habits of the intellectual — reading under my breath, savouring words and phrases (muttering curses and hexes). Old enough to know better to be content in my own company (recluse /spinster /strange).

If I’m a woman reading, I’m thinking (problematic).

If I’m a woman reading, I’m imagining (hysterical / fantasist).

If I’m a woman writing, I might be burning with ideas. I might set something on fire — be an agent of change. (When will she settle down?)

I don’t keep a cat. I’m allergic to them, in fact — inconveniently not adhering to stereotype. But I confess to possess a wand — or a flying broomstick — depending what phase the moon is in — hidden in the guise of a pen — but just as capable of causing magic and mayhem. Of transporting me high above the humdrum.

I’m my own Muse, no longer silent or merely whispering in the ears of others. Freed from haunting the margins of the male canon — l have found — am finding — my tongue.

I’m a woman of words, a body of knowledge, defining my own borders and boundaries.

In my fantasy, I live on words — as a Breatharian lives on air. Craving to consume ideas as oxygen — savouring syllables, wolfing down words, swallowing sentences whole. No dishes to be done. No necessity for the constant labour of shop, cook, clean. I smash all the crockery, demolish the kitchen. Build myself a library. Become a library.

Pile the pages upon my tongue, like layers of finest pastry. Books upon books, my bottomless bibliophilic banquet. A never-ending literary feast— my philosophy of gastronomy — platters of Plato, bowls of Barthes, sumptuous servings of Sappho — steaming with innuendo. Nibbling on Nin — oh, but I would swallow Shakespeare whole — willingly endure a Renaissance of indigestion.

Reading by day, writing by night — the inhale and exhale of words, attuned to nature’s elemental-eternal clock of dark and light — like a tree transmuting oxygen, but in reverse.

Inhale, exhale. Read, write. Dark, light. Day, night. Words as my breath. Breath as my words.

Letting the words breathe for me.

This constant consumption of intelligentsia, morphing my mitochondria, re-writing the text of my DNA, transforming my story. My body —

textually-toned word-honed metaphor-metabolized —

Like the letter “i”, standing slender, with the hefty weight of that crowning orb, my head — a pantheon /panoply of possibility. Inside, wisdom equivalent to the library of ancient Alexandria.

The tracts of my brain like archival labyrinths —where I lose myself willingly, following the lure of ideological threads. Catch the inkling-flash behind my eyes from the glimmer of gilt-bound tomes, pages fallen open on gold-leaf iconography —illuminating that age-old veneration of logos.

Words — transmuted from my mind to the page through my pen. Spells— but with language. My invocation to creation, as I burn — not with shame, but inspiration.

I am a woman writing.

Men have read me. Ransacked me. Plundered me. Like that bygone Egyptian lost legacy — knowledge has always been covetable. Combustible. Especially knowledge inside a woman.

Burn witch, burn.

There are forces still that seek to put me on the pyre of patriarchy. Full of the fever of words — how easily I, too, would catch alight. Tongue of vellum, skin like parchment. Set flame to the bind of my spine — flammable sinew like glue.

(It’s been proven over centuries of witch-hunting that a woman on fire cannot think clearly.)

But as I burn, what words I’d speak, erupting in eloquent ecstasy, sacred texts from my tongue — as if I fired with the flame of something more holy than desecration of this —

body of knowledge burning

Like Joan of Arc at the stake, my visions articulated would not be forgotten. Would burn on in the memories and stories of those that witnessed.

Enough inspiration in my ashes still to fertilize forests of story for the future.

Bring your daughters to sit in my shade, bid them put their ears to the earth — and listen. Put their pens to the page —

— and write.

© Melissa Coffey July 2022

Body of Knowledge Burning is in response to my own prose poem prompt “How have words written you?”. Some of you who got to the prompt early may recognize parts. I removed a section of my initial prose poem for further development because I saw it was wanting to be something separate. Smouldering away under this piece was the incitement by famous French feminist and essayist Helene Cixous:

Write yourself. Your bodies must be heard.

This quote has long been part of the inspiration for me to write, and share my writing publicly. I’m often aware of the history of silenced and suppressed women standing behind me when I write. And although many women writers have far less obstacles today to writing and getting published, stigmas and misogynist attitudes still exist, as well as financial limitations for many.

Thank you for reading! And Scritturites, keep those fantastic prompt responses coming in …

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