The Rhetorical Feminine
Gliding from the confluence of Battery Rock
to the Devil’s Backbone inside the Shawnee
National Forrest makes a sound I cannot
duplicate in English. With one finger tracing
the route on an atlas, my tongue wet
with nostalgia—a waterlogged migration
by touch. I seek the cities without the words.
As late somebody’s 1810 there were headwater
communities of women for the express purpose of healing,
birthing, governing shared territory—crouched
in the frog-legged stance of delivery and defense.
Linguistic evidence suggests a pattern of feminization
in Shawnee rhetoric. Nation of women,
bellowed strangers even as river city
dialects mouthed spells that cured war like hides
and curved breech births veiled in water
to the banks of living territory. Gliding from the confluence
of Battery Rock to the Devil’s Backbone
inside the Shawnee National Forrest
makes a sound I cannot duplicate in English.
***
Photograph of Laura Da’ by Kathee Statler.
