Red Shoes, Kickass Women, and Stiletto Gang Magic

"She speaks for her clan" by Dorothy Sullivan

We here at The Stiletto Gang are celebrating a newly designed logo for our blog and the diverse makeup of our membership. We are women writers from various backgrounds, but we all share one thing in common. We're pretty kickass women. We are all strong in our own ways, some quiet yet powerful, some flamboyant yet solidly dependable.

I feel very comfortable with my Stiletto Gang blogmates, because the Cherokee have traditionally had strong women who shared power with men, who owned the land and houses, who could go to war with the men. Consequently, I tend to look for strength of one kind or another in the women with whom I surround myself. The women with whom I'm friends are women who are comfortable with their own power, rather like my varied pals here in the Stiletto Gang. I write a lot about strong women and women coming into their own. It's part of my heritage and part of my life today.

Like many of us, I don't wear high heels any longer, more interested in comfort and practicality, but I think the symbol of our red stilettos signals the world that on this blog sits the writing of a cadre of kickass women, often read by other kickass women. So here's a poem for all of us and the magic that happens when strong women come together to share their strength and their vulnerabilities.

SHE TAKES HER POWER IN HER OWN HANDS

and pours it over her body,

drenching hair and face,

standing in pools of herself,

dripping excess. She takes up her power

with strong hands and holds it close

to her breasts like an infant, warming it

with her own heat. She draws her power

around her like a hand-loomed shawl,

a cloak to keep the wind out,

pulling it tighter, tugging and patting it

smooth against the winter.

She pulls her power from branches

of dead trees where it has hung so long

neglected that it has changed from white to deep

weathered gold. She wraps her hair

in power like the light of distant stars,

gleaming through the dark emptiness

in and around everything. She lets her power down

into a dank well, down and down,

clanking against stone walls, until

she hears the splash, a little further

to submerge it completely, then draws it

hand over rubbed-raw hand, heavy enough

to make her shoulders and forearms ache

and shudder with strain, pulls it up

overflowing, her power,

and drinks in deep, desperate gulps

out of a lifetime of thirst. She weaves her power

into a web, a cloth, a shroud, and hangs it

across the night where it catches the light of stars

and refracts it into a shining glory,

brighter than the moon

and colder. She holds her power

in her hands at the top of the hill

in the top of the tree where she steps out

onto the air and her wings

of power buoy her to ride the thermals

higher and higher toward the sun,

her new friend.

When she returns,

she folds her power over and over

into a tiny, dense pellet to swallow,

feeling its mass sink to her center

and explode, spreading throughout to transform

her into something elemental,

a star,

a mountain,

a river,

a god.

Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Linda Rodriguez's Dark Sister: Poems has just been released. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published to high praise in 2017. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2019. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com