Tag Archives: feminist writing

body

deem only my body of use,
so I use it.
my rage has no outward path,
so I use it.
I make the marks of rage,
weave with it, the raffia thread
across and over my skin,
the only thing I have of use.
like Frida, like Sylvia.
only my body is of use.
so I decorate it with
black sheaths and red ribbons.
I cannot pick up my pen or paintbrush,
and my outward rage has
no use, no road.
but my body is my totem,
so they say,
a nationalised service.
I do not get to say what is wrong
or right.
so I decorate and mutilate,
pour water on this block of clay.
this will not end with an armless Venus.
it is not mine.
I tremble with the shining scissors,
and wonder why I never
comment on the ugliness of
Male shoes-
yet the shaved head of a woman
makes me Feel

the birds

it’s only in the dark that the words come, in the lonely space next to my sleeping lover. I read that bukowski had a sweet little bird inside him, begging to get out, and I heard that boys all over the world read his poem and wept. I do not have a bird. I have a nuclear war. it is four in the morning, and the rain has been hammering us all. I am the unreliable narrator. queen of the ashes, of burning paper covered with years and years of indelible ink. I gear up to get sick, and wonder how long the fire will burn for. the birds are stupid creatures. they sing even as it rains. nuclear wars are precious, tenacious, unpredictable, full of warnings and suggestions and promises of destruction. but they only exist in the heads of powerful men, so far. if the atom splits, and the rain drops, then we all die. or perhaps only inside the heads of powerful men. 


I would like the past to stay gift-wrapped. if I breathe hard enough, perhaps it will. I have a guilty curse. I wonder if I should apologise to all those men I burned. I wonder if I will burn any more. I don’t want to. I think my grief has gotten mixed up with the nuclear war. I want that girl to stay gift-wrapped, but I realise she is a part of me now. he stirs upstairs. I hope not with upset. I realise I do have a bird in my heart after all. it lives outside the body, delicate, with precious little wings ripe for the breaking. I sit inside my domestic womb, covered in blankets and cinnamon sugar, and hope that none of this will touch me in the morning. I must remember I am not a film. I must remember I am not a poem. I must remember that I am a human. I drink more water. I can look nuclear war right in the eye. this war belongs only to me. I must remember that I am Hecate. life is not a mythology. 

cracks

some people think
I am a trodden-on sapling.
a pathetic thing
made up of fragile acronyms,
they think I should shake like
a tin full of thumbtacks.
should they feel afraid? 

I have seen rivets on
many wrists, on secret wrists;
heard the wailing
of secret mouths and
felt the fearful breath
of so many pairs of secret lungs
on my shoulder. 

not a trodden-on thing. no.
a swimmer in the naȉve sea –
a swallower of salty water,
I can’t deny.
but I never drowned
in the space between the cracks.
I am not afraid. are you? 

titanic

a girl
just as lost as I was,
reached out with
a perfectly manicured hand.
queen captain of the new Titanic,
weathering a storm you
could never know
(not even in your worst nightmares).
the lies of boys brought us together
brought us to a three-hour phone
conversation before we even knew
who we were.
that’s not how us damaged girls are
supposed to act, but
even then we knew where
our blood was best directed.
a girl,
with more beauty and soul than
you could ever understand
(or would deserve).
they should be the ones eating our pain
digesting it whole and
letting it fester in their rotten guts
but that
is not how life works, so on
and on we will go.
she does not need to prove anything
to you, but look how she
glimmers in the light as
a pearl
even when you try to cast your shadow.
fuck you,
we live.

prince

I used to think he was a prince,
and I wrote about him with diamonds
flowing from my pen.

I stared at him in wide eyed
wonder whilst he slept
in my bed, and I so wanted to
plant myself in his soil
and grow my smothering bindweed
around him.

I let the waves of
obsession and lust
wash over my heart,

and oh,
those waves were so
lovely for a time

(until they came crashing down
and I screamed for three
whole hours when I realised
he did not plan on falling in
love with me).

then he was gone and
I was powerless and
angry and consumed by
my need for his
royal validation.

“I hate you!
come back,”
I whispered into our letters,

and my pen flowed
not with diamonds but
poisoned well-water.

then time passed
and I grew and
flowered and blossomed and
shed my buds and became
an oak.

and
when he came back
(because that is what
always seems to happen),

he wasn’t a prince and
his hair wasn’t spun gold anymore.
he was just a man.

I wasn’t his arrow
and my burns had healed

no longer so susceptible to
drops of water and kisses.

I revelled in our connection
and nothing more.
I looked at him and he at me.

uncomplicated and free
and true in our humanity and our
normalcy and our faultery
and our fuck ups.

maybe now that I am a tree
and not a twining unwanted stem
I can be like this
and feel joy for its simplicity
instead of dissecting its
fragile meaning.

or maybe I will muse and see
that my desire for his turrets and towers
ebbs away with the moonlight
trickling down my thighs as
the lap of the warmest tide
goes out. 

we shall see, little prince.

mirror

I saw her there, in the drunken mirror, reflected in the glass dirtied with smears of black and orange, fingerprints and hairspray trails. I saw her there in her purity, and I marvelled at every inch of her being; a drunken mirror, maybe, a dirty reflection, but one so pure and bright I could not ignore it.

a little woman, she stood there in black, peeling off her layers of wet clothing and laughing unfettered, until they were all laid out to dry. she stood twisted and I marvelled still, at each perfect fold of skin; where her thighs met her buttocks, and led down legs of gold and grey and black, to the gentle lines across her stomach, the creases beneath her ribs worn in from how she sat.

and she did sit, I knew, in the past; but now, she stood, and turned, touched her arms at their angles, one by one. more she touched and more I marvelled, at her skin so golden-bright and smooth, so proud with its pockmarks and scars and stains, bearing such a dreamlike contrast to the streaks of dark hair that danced so lightly on her back as she turned to laugh more, more, more.

I looked and sought her, perhaps only for a second, and saw so much that I had to look away as quickly as I went. what a thing of beauty, what wholeness she emitted in only a moment, I thought, I thought, I thought. I longed to touch her, to reach her, to smell her, perhaps forever, forever and ever more. in the mirror there was only a moment, but I learnt so much I felt tears prickling in the corners of my eyes. I wondered if I dared to look again, what I may see, if those paradises so absolute could possibly remain, of whether perhaps they existed only then, in that light, in that reflection, at those angles?

who is this, I asked myself, that can stand and turn and laugh so readily, so beautifully, so purely and freely, who can posses such vibrancy and gleam in nothing but a moment in a grimy mirror?

I dared, and I saw her again. staring back into my eyes, seeing me. she is. I am. and I soar past my years of hatred and coldness, my denial, my pain and pointless suffering, my self-loathing and denigrating. I am her, with the golden legs and soft stomach and black hair and curved ribs. I am her. I am, I am, I am, and I sink heavy into bed that night elated with the knowledge of the truth;

I am, I am, I am.