resistance is a woman

whose land is all on fire

perseverance and determination

are her daughters

she is a palestinian mother who

hands her children a legacy of

war together with the

weapons to fight in it

she is a black woman draped

in purple satin who strolls

down a runway allowing only

the clothes she wears to be sold

resistance is the absent native woman

who died at the hands of a white artist

who lives inside herself

while thriving inside of me

resistance is a girl child who

witnesses her mother’s death and

swears to survive no matter

where the hiding place

she is a woman beaten with hate

by the man she loves who

decides to escape to a world

where touch is sacred

resistance is the woman who defies

the male definition of love

and loves another woman

then heals an entire nation in doing so

she is a woman torn apart by

the barbed wire surrounding her home

who plots a way out

despite the consequences

resistance is every woman who

has ever considered taking up

arms writing a story leaving the abuse

saving her children or saving herself

she is every woman to dares

to stage a revolution complete a novel

be loved or change the world

resistance walks across a landscape

of fire accompanied by her daughters

perseverance and determination

in The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women (Sister Vision Press, 1998)