{"id":222797,"date":"2022-10-31T12:01:19","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T12:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=222797"},"modified":"2022-10-27T04:27:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T03:27:13","slug":"just-two-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/just-two-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Two Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I stand here before you
\nin my mother\u2019s hand-me-downs,
\nin this world where mothers must work like they don\u2019t have children
\nand parent like they don\u2019t have jobs,
\nkeeping households running and bills paid
\nwhile their hearts run around outside their bodies
\non tiny little legs that don\u2019t yet know where the wolves are,
\nbut don\u2019t you dare over-mother them,
\nor under-mother them,
\nor get anything wrong while treading laundry
\nand kung fuing the kitchen
\nand, oh yeah,
\nif you could save the world from nuclear armageddon
\nand environmental collapse when you get a minute
\nthat\u2019d be great.<\/p>\n

I stand here before you
\nin my mother\u2019s hand-me-downs,
\nwith my mother\u2019s strangled voice,
\nand my mother\u2019s Pinesol hands,
\nand my mother\u2019s weeping back,
\nand my mother\u2019s feral chores,
\nand my mother\u2019s loving patience,
\nand my mother\u2019s gritted teeth,
\nand my mother\u2019s inner beauty
\nthat you never get to see \u2014
\nher inner world of unheard symphonies
\nand unpainted art
\nand oceans of sleeping babies,
\nneatly stuffed into a housecoat
\ndrowned out by a Helen Reddy song.<\/p>\n

I stand here before you
\nin my mother\u2019s hand-me-downs,
\nglaring with crosshair eyes at eelfaced manipulators
\nwho blacken the children\u2019s sky,
\nwho poison my children\u2019s water,
\nwho microplastic my children\u2019s blood,
\nwho scorch my children\u2019s Earth
\nto turn billionaires into trillionaires,
\nvowing \u201cI see you,
\nI\u2019ll stop you,
\nright after this dentist appointment,
\nright after this assignment,
\nright after these taxes,
\nright after this to-do list,
\nI\u2019ll be ready to stop you
\nin, like, two more weeks, maybe,
\nor maybe two weeks after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stand here before you
\nin my mother\u2019s hand-me-downs,
\nwith my mother\u2019s intuition
\n(two eyes in the back of her head \u2014
\n\u201cI can see what you are doing!\u201d),
\nbut my many eyes can only glance
\nbefore more dishes pile up
\nbefore the to-do list unfurls \u2014
\nI\u2019ll get to it, I\u2019ll get to you,
\nI\u2019ll stop you,
\nI will,
\nI see what you are doing,
\nI just need to take the kids to daycare
\nbut make the sandwiches first
\nand stop off on the way to work
\nfor a part to fix the air con
\nbefore the summer comes
\nbefore the heat you stoked
\nwith dinosaur bones
\nand Canary Island loopholes
\nand the infantile ambitions
\nof impotent men
\nhits our little rental
\n(that I\u2019m so grateful to have
\nso grateful I am
\non-my-hands-and-knees grateful
\nyour-cock-in-my-throat grateful
\nplease don\u2019t kick us out we love you we do)
\nlike a solar wind storm
\nbarbecuing my children
\nin this tent made of weatherboards
\nlike a tiny funeral pyre
\nfor bad women,
\nnaughty witches,
\nladies flying solo
\nwho need to be put in their place.<\/p>\n

Just two weeks.
\nJust two weeks.
\nJust two weeks more.
\nJust two weeks and I\u2019ll sit in silence for while.
\nJust two weeks and I\u2019ll write this all down.
\nJust two weeks I need to get this stuff done.
\nJust two weeks.
\nJust two weeks.
\nJust two weeks,
\nand I\u2019ll stop you.<\/p>\n

26 Oct 2022<\/em><\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly\u00a0at <\/a><\/em>Medium<\/a>. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stand here before you
\nin my mother\u2019s hand-me-downs,
\nin this world where mothers must work like they don\u2019t have children
\nand parent like they don\u2019t have jobs, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-222797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}