Tampons

Hey WCRG,

Here's the poem I read in class. I think it is an entry point for a more positive and empowering relationship to menstruation.

Love Rudi

Tampons, By Ellen Bass (1985)

My periods have changed. It is years

since I have swallowed pink and gray, round

chalky midols from the bottle with the smiling girl.

Now I plan a quiet space,

protect myself those first few days when my uterus lets

go and I am an open anemone. I know

when my flow will come. I watch my mucous pace

changes like a dancer, follow the fall

and rise of my body heat. All this

and yet I never questioned them, those slim white handies.

It took me years to learn to use them

starting with a jar of Vaseline.

I didn't even know where the hole was.

I didn't even know enough

to try to find one. I pushed until

only a little stuck out and hoped

that was far enough.

I tried every month through high school.

And now that I can change it in a moving car–

like Audrey Hepburn changing dresses in the taxi

in the last scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's–

I've got to give them up.

Tampons, I read, are

bleached, are

chemically treated to

compress better,

contain asbestos.

Good old asbestos. Once we learned not to shake it–

Johnson & Johnson's – on our babies or diaphragms,

we thought we had it licked.

So what do we do? They're universal.

Even macrobiotics and lesbian separatists are hooked on them.

Go back to sanitary napkins?

Junior high, double napkins

on the heavy days, walking home damp underpants

chafing thighs. It's been a full twelve years

since I have worn one, since Spain when Marjorie pierced my ears

and I unloaded half a suitcase of the big gauze pads in the hotel trash.

Someone in my workshop suggested Tassaways, little

cups that catch the flow.

They've stopped making them,

we're told. Women found they could reuse them

and the company couldn't make enough

money that way. Besides,

the suction pulled the cervix out of shape.

Then diaphragms

It presses on me, one woman says.

So swollen these days. Too tender.

Menstrual extraction, a young woman says.

I heard about that. Ten minutes

and it's done.

But I do not trust putting tubes into my uterus each month.

We're told everything is safe

in the beginning.

Mosses.

The Indians used mosses.

I live in Aptos. We grow

succulents and pine.

I will buy mosses

when they sell them at the co-op.

Okay. It's like the whole birth control schmeer.

There just isn't a good way. Women bleed.

We bleed.

The blood flows out of us. So we will bleed.

Blood paintings on our thighs, patterns

like river beds, blood on the chairs in

insurance offices, blood on Greyhound buses

and 747s, blood blots, flower forms

on the blue skirts of the stewardesses.

Blood on restaurant floors, supermarket aisles, the steps of government

buildings. Sidewalks will have blood trails,

like Gretel's bread

crumbs. We can always find our way.

We will ease into rhythm together, it happens

when women live closely -- African tribes, college sororities --

our blood flowing on the same days. The first day

of our heaviest flow we will gather in Palmer, Massachusetts,

on the steps of Tampax, Inc. We'll have a bleed-in.

We'll smear blood on our faces. Max Factor

will join OB in bankruptcy. The perfume industry

will collapse, who needs

whale sperm, turtle oil, when we have free blood?

For a little while cleaning products will boom,

409, Lysol, Windex. But

the executives will give up. The cleaning woman is leaving a

red wet rivulet, as she scrubs down the previous stains.

It's no use. The men would have to

do it themselves, and that will never come up

for a vote at the Board. Women's clothing manufacturers, fancy

furniture, plush carpet, all will phase out. It's just not

practical. We will live the old ways.

Simple floors, dirt or concrete, can be hosed down

or straw can be cycled through the compost.

Simple clothes, none in summer. No more swimming pools.

Swim in the river. Yes, swim in the river.

Dogs will fall in love with us.

We'll feed the fish with our blood. Our blood

will neutralize the chemicals and dissolve the old car parts.

Our blood will detoxify the phosphates and the

PCBs. Our blood will feed the depleted soils.

Our blood will water the dry, tired surface of the earth.

We will bleed. We will bleed. We will

bleed until we bathe her in our blood and she turns

slippery new like a baby birthing.