I thought for a long time

“A Woman is Talking to Death”

referred to a woman talking if not too much

at least a lot, as in talking you to death

something I do all the time

open one sentence after another

close some later, get annoyed

when you seem distracted 
in the classroom too, if it were more mixed

if I didn’t teach at a women’s college I bet

I’d be taken less seriously, the way I’ve let myself

go, powerpoint slide with too many boxes

and too many arrows between them

so that everything seems to be connected

COINTELPRO, Redstockings, Deep Throat
maybe I mixed up Judy Grahn with Pat Parker
I’m beginning to

wonder if

the tactics

of this revolution

               is to

talk the enemy to death
Parker means the enemy

she means this revolution too 
Judy Grahn means death

who keeps us from / our lovers

the black man she leaves on the bridge

the women she didn’t hold didn’t kiss

the one with a knife she didn’t want

to sleep with—too fat too old too ugly—
she’s writing this in 1974

this woman is a lesbian be careful
so it’s a big deal when she leaves the man

on the bridge when she writes

as I have left so many of my lovers

that he should be counted among them

in 1974, Judy Grahn knows who the enemy is 
six big policemen 
and who her lovers are

and the wind
could blow them all over the edge