Tag: poetry

When I was twenty-six I looked in the mirror
Saw my mother’s eyebrows
Picked up the tweezers.
Ripped that bushy, untouched, good-girl reminder
Out of my face
One hair at a time.
I carved an arch, polished, sardonic
Looked nothing like my mother when I was through.
Smiled at my reflection in the mirror.
Felt free.

Requirements for Admittance to the Sisterhood of Women: A Revision

Real women, they say.
Real women.
There are rules and regulations,
standards,
expectations.
Real women are ____.
Real women have ____.
Real women eat ____.
Real women buy ____.

Well. This is embarrassing.
Truly.
But you see, the Sisterhood–
the one all women belong to–
we met, just last week
to discuss exactly this:
the dire question of who gets to be a Real Woman.

You never showed up,
too busy, no doubt, with your own conversations
on who should be kept out.
But, well…this is awkward.

See, we all took a vote.
The whole Sisterhood, yes.
Should there be an exam? A medical test?
No.

We decided to let anyone in
who says that a woman’s soul lives
in their skin.
Regardless of whether or not someone else
agrees with their assessment of themselves.

And this notion that gender requires peer-review…
well, we’ve decided it simply won’t do.
So the only one out of the Sisterhood–well–
it’s you.

The first thing you always feel
Is betrayed.
How could you? You cry.
How could you leave me
After all I did to be what you wanted?
How can you look at the twisted shape
Of the malformed creature
I made myself into
And say you don’t love this
Monster of your own creation?

How can you spend months, years
Stitching me together piece by piece,
A living doll made of all the best parts
Of all the more perfect women
You could never get?
How can you bring life to something
So hideous
No one else could love it
And then refuse to love it yourself?
You made me! You,
The Victor Frankenstein of lovers,
Putting in long nights of gruesome work,
Only to walk away when the work is finished,
And I am not what you envisioned.
How dare you.

I was golden once.
I had a soul.
I was whole, imperfect,
Beautifully so. I was new in the world.
I trusted. I loved.
I loved…unwisely.
I fell for the false grandeur of your vision,
Laid out for me like the only path–
The only way a mere mortal
Can hope to be loved by a someday god.
I did not know you were
The god of Death.
And no one ever told me that love
Is not surgery.

Valentine’s Day

I’ve written so many love songs
For people who didn’t deserve them.
A girl who lived in Adelaide,
A boy who should have loved me more.
A girl who thought my love a burden,
A boy who hurt the things he loved.
A boy I found again too late
When there was too much damage done.

Gallons of spilled ink,
Callouses on the sides of fingers,
Forearm smudges from left-hand writing,
Pages and pages and pages and pages.
Notebooks, filled with all this love.
Laden lines I’d like to burn.
Light them up beneath the moon,
Fan the flames into a fury,
Watch them turn to smoky shadows,
Ghosts released to the pre-dawn air.

Forgiveness

You made forgiveness a luxury
I could not afford. A weakness
I could not abide in myself.
A danger to my fragile health.
I worship a vengeful god these days,
The kind that visits plagues on children
To punish their intractable parents.
The kind that understands, approves
When I pluck your eyes from their staring sockets,
This is only what you did to me,
Nothing more. It’s only fair.
Am I a monster? Probably.
But a monster that only kills to live.
The kind of sin vengeful gods forgive.

To the pleas for caution and moderation

We are being too harsh, it seems.
To extreme. Too quick
To judge;
Judge Aquilina was too mean.
What about forgiveness,
The worried men on every screen
Wring their hands and ask of us:
“When can we expect redemption?
Asking for a friend.”

Honestly?
You tell me.

What do you think is a fitting sentence
For a grown man’s dick shoved in my face
When I was barely three years old?
What is the price justice demands
For a teenage girl behind a dumpster,
Torn, unconscious, tossed like trash?

How many years will make up for it
When girls are murdered for saying no
And everyone says we’re asking for it?
What penance would you say “paid in full!” to?
What is the right amount of time?

What will it take to balance the sheets,
Wipe out the red,
Settle the score?

A hundred years for each of your victim’s tears.
More.

When do you think I’ll feel less raped?
I say let the punishment fit the crime.

If I never get to turn back the clocks,
If I live my life as another #MeToo,
If I don’t get to forget what you did,
Then neither do you. Neither do you.

I exist in a basic state of rage
Now, most days,
And I sleep the fitful,
Dreamless sleep of those
With many miles to go,
Miles and miles and
Miles to go before
We dig our heels in deep
In snow,
Or dirt,
Or desperation,
Against the future we
Are facing, not a storm,
A darkened wood,
Not a cage with bars and locks,
But, where all our promise stood,
A concrete wall, a monument,
A fifteen-story stone full-stop.

Just something for the
kids to climb until
The world runs out of time
And we lay drying in the sun.
The war is over,
But who won?

My rage, because it’s all that’s left.
My rage, because it won’t burn out.
It’s fueled like Wyatt’s fucking Torch
Misplaced within a better book.
It burns when no one’s left
To look.

Fucking Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas.
Fucking Dylan Thomas.
Who did he think he was?
Stringing words together
Into brooding surrealities,
So seductive to the ears of this naive girl
When read by the boy with the
Beautiful eyes,
Meeting hers over the musty pages,
Faux-shy smile,
Eyebrow raised in a question
Met with a single half-aborted nod.
Then, lips parting, arms reaching,
Hands touching,
Dumb kids doing quiet things Nevertheless
Not meant for libraries.

Resolve

This time last year
I told myself I was going
to finish something
do something important.
And I did,
at least one of those things,
I did.

But the world has gotten
so dark, so fraught
so unbearably ugly.
And I look back
on 365 days and think,
“what did I do to stop it?”
What could I have done?

The answer is more.
I could have done more.

So this time next year
when I look back again
on goals reached,
milestones,
memories made in spite
of the ugliness…

I want to be able to say
with absolute certainty
that there was nothing more
I could have done
than what I did.
Nothing more to give
than what I gave.

So I can walk forward
with no regrets.