Samuel Baca-Henry

“Every praising mouth is filled with ‘we love you’ yet the words are followed by one arm raised with a goad or a whip and another with a knife.”
Page 169”
― Samuel Baca-Henry, Lament of Hathor

“A priestess of Hetheru said:

‘That which is held in abomination to me is the block of slaughter of the god. [198] That which is abominable, that which is abominable I will not eat. An abominable thing is filth, I will not eat thereof. That which is an abomination unto my Ka shall not enter my body. I will live upon that whereon live the gods and the Spirit-souls. I shall live, and I shall be master of their cakes. I am master of them, and I shall eat them under the trees of the dweller in the house of Hetheru, my Lady, the Mistress of Iken.’ [199]”

[198] Directly quotes from the Book of the Dead Papyrus of Nu, The Chapter of Not Letting the Heart of Nu, Whose Word Is Truth, Be Carried Away From Him in Khert-Neter.
[199] Directly quoted from the Book of the Dead Papyrus of Ani, The Chapter of Making the Transformation Into Ptah

Pages 210-211”
― Samuel Baca-Henry, Lament of Hathor

“Of humans, she had stood beside the wombed to try to protect during childbirth. In the form of the Seven Hetherus, human fates were determined as newborns. Later, Hetheru helped the deceased move to the Duat-land of the afterlife. And she greeted them with bread. Seven more cows and their male consort, who some say is Usir,[45] Lord of the Cows, assist the deceased according to the Book of the Dead. The cow called She of Chemmis[46] nurses the deceased with her milk. [47] Thus Hetheru and her brethren aid humans seven times with their births and seven times with their rebirths; and also for the gods.

Now Hertheru was silent. She slept. Her great lungs heaved.

I kept vigil over her through the night, gently stroking the Mother of mothers like my babe, as she had comforted and nuzzled so many.”

[45] a.k.a. Osiris
[46] Present-day Akhmim, Egypt
[47] Pinch, 178

Page 80”
― Samuel Baca-Henry, Lament of Hathor

“I quit eating meat in 1976, the same year I turned fifteen, came out, and went to my first gay rights rally (not in that order). When I say that I 'came out,' I mean that I resolved to never lie about my love for women, never deliberately pass for straight, and never deny a lover by calling her 'him.' To do so, I felt, would be to betray not only the women I desired, but my deepest self.

My decision to quit meat was equally simple. Somehow, through the confluence of midseventies influences, I knew that vegetarianism was a particularly healthy way to eat. One day, quite suddenly, I realized: If I didn't need to eat meat to stay alive, then eating meat was killing for pleasure. I couldn't live with myself, wouldn't be the nonviolent person I believed myself to be, if I killed other beings--beings who had their own desires--merely to satisfy my desire for the taste of their flesh.

Looking back, I see that both decisions, coming out and quitting meat, are about the interplay of desire and integrity. Sometimes integrity means being true to your desires, and sometimes integrity requires you to refuse your desires. I also notice that both decisions were about bodies and consent. A primary tenet of gay liberation is that what consenting people do with each other's bodies is nobody else's business. And, of course, eating meat is something you do to somebody else's body without their consent.”
― pattrice jones