I wrote this poem after January 21, 2017. I performed it at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, May 6th, 2017.
Woman Interrupted
A thousand men in cheap toupees
wave blue dresses
rippling and undulating like patriotism
stained and soiled with falsehoods
lock her up, lock her up, lock her up
they chant boisterously
One blonde woman in sensible shoes
stands at a podium
lips twitching from strain
shoulders slumped, knees buckling
under red, white and blue weight
senator, secretary, sweaty salvation
birthing encumbrances
she carries the burden of every woman
Five hundred thousand women in white pant suits
swallow up concrete space
labia-pink knitted hats nod and wink
clever slogans bob up and down like bouys
marching clits, screaming vulvas and singing snatches
snake fluidly through city streets
A thousand brown women in mini skirts
look to the ceiling
scramble up the blond hair rungs
of a deteriorating D.C. ladder
heaving cleavages squashed against glass
red-tape lipstick smeared across transparency
One middle-aged woman in a black pant suit
flashes dejected pearly whites
five hundred thousand deferred dreams
tumble from her shoulders
into putrid puddles of complacency
suicidal bravado slices
into dead air silently
woman rupture, woman interrupted
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Author: rosemarymezadesplas
“I was born and raised in Garland, Texas; a manufacturing-based suburb of Dallas. My parents’ heritage is rooted south of the US border: my mother was born in Allende located in Coahuila, Mexico. My father, born in Santa Maria, Texas, grew up in Tampico situated within Tamaulipas, Mexico. The tenacity of my eight aunts in the face of personal tragedies and adversities was an early inspiration; their narratives contributed to my embrace of feminist ideology.”
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas currently lives in Farmington, New Mexico. The cornerstone of her artwork is the female experience within a patriarchal society. As a woman, daily navigation of our world is a precarious tight-rope walk. The use of portraiture to discuss gender-based burdens personalizes the political. Intricate drawings are created by meticulous stitching of human hair. The dichotomy of human hair, depending upon context, is it can be engaging or off-putting: long, luxurious hair is sexy, but a hair in one’s soup is unappealing. Meza-DesPlas seduces the viewer with elegant, sensual marks of hair. Thematically, her artworks advocate for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Through on-site drawing installations and watercolor paintings, Meza-DesPlas evokes intellectual and visceral responses to socio-cultural burdens endured by women; these burdens and their subsequent impact on contemporary culture are interpreted through a global lens.
She earned a MFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art (Hoffberger School of Painting) and a BFA from the University of North Texas. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Her work has been written about in several publications including the Huffington Post, Dallas Morning News, The Durango Herald, Wall Street International, and Interview Magazine. Ms. Meza-DesPlas parallels the themes in her visual artwork with the written word and spoken word performances.
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