Thank You For The Magazine Full of Ads for Liposuction, Permanent Make-Up and Even Vaginal Makeovers For Fuck's Fucking Sake and Dear God Why Is There Nothing Else To Read in This Room

I really don't care
what I look like

I don't care
what the sight of
the shape of my body
makes anyone else
think or feel

I really don't give a fuck

I don't owe you beauty

I don't have to smile for you

I don't have to
dress for success
or to disguise my figure
or to preserve my virtue

and you can fuck off

Civilization

Muscovy ducks have evolved
an entire biology to cope
with rape

The drakes are bigger
and they hold down the ducks
Their penises are corkscrews
and they explode erect

It must hurt like hell
if the duck isn't willing
because her cloaca
twists and turns
and if she hates it she resists
It twists opposite
to him
and traps in blind pockets
that don't go anywhere

But if she wants him
she lets him in
and it fits
and more ducklings hatch
from the eggs she laid
after she mated
with a male that she thought was kinda all right

But women can't do that
so we evolve whole societies

We make laws and civilization
so maybe one day
we can fucking be over all this
might makes right bullshit

and we can feel safe on the fucking streets

maybe

Mother

Why is birthing disembodied
why do we sterilize it
and pathologize it
and spiritualize it
and reduce it to flat
two dimensionality
until it becomes as bland and as safe
as the artist's creation
or the writer's words
which is to say,
still not very bland or safe at all

Why do we wipe away
the blood
the piss
the shit
and far, far worse
the mucus

We clean up the Blessed Virgin
and we take away the very possibility of an orgasm
by saying she never even had sex
no we don't say that
we say that she never knew a man

And sometimes we canonize women
no
they're little girls
who had the decency to get murdered instead of raped
because that's so much better
and holy too

Why do we hate ourselves so much

Why do we hate our bodies

Why do we hate what nurtured
and sheltered
and fed
and warmed
and loved our children

Why do we starve and pinch and poke and liposculpt
what attracted and aroused
and pleased our lovers

Why do we feel ashamed
of what pleases
ourselves as well

Why are we either virgins or whores
Sluts or wives
Sinners or saints
Angels or animals

But never just women

Trigger Warning

You don't understand
and they don't even work
     that way

There is no safe space
You can't make the space safe
You can't help save me
     from me

Because the word

     "rape"

isn't a trigger.
After all,
you never taught me to say
the words that would name
what you did to me

No, the smell of engine oil
the heat of the summer
and the touch of old wood
The sweat trickling down my back
as I pretended
     I was not there

My breath in my throat when
I finally gasped,
when I had to face facts and admit
that I was not really dead

That's the trigger
and how can you have a trigger warning
for being alive

Daughter

Father
My father
That is my father
Bless me Father, for I have
     sinned
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Father
Your belt on my back
as I struggled
     and shrieked
Never enough of a transgression to merit
the severity

Father
Your stench in the night
Your hand on my throat

Father
Your approval
always out of reach
The goalposts constantly moving
The mirage of your
     love

Father,
am I pretty? I asked

You're pretty twice, you said
I beamed
You're pretty twice, you said
I must have smiled even bigger

Pretty ugly
And pretty apt to stay that way

You tried to break me
With words
With beatings
With cold disapproval
With
     everything you had

You failed

I lived

You died

I do not meekly accept lies
that men like you tell

I do not consent to the use, control,
objectification
     of my body

I do not live as you wish

I will not die as you wish

I see you

I am walking away