The only other girl at the party
is ranting about feminism.
The audience: a sea of **** jokes and snapbacks
and styrofoam cups and me.
They gawk at her mouth like it is a drain
clogged with too many opinions.
I shoot her an empathetic glance
and say nothing. This house is for
wallpaper women. What good
is wallpaper that speaks?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
whose coffee table silence
will these boys rest their feet on?

These boys…
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if someone takes my spot?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if everyone notices I’ve been
sitting this whole time? I am ashamed
of keeping my feminism in my pocket
until it is convenient not to, like at poetry
slams or woman studies classes.
There are days I want people to like me
more than I want to change the world.
Once I forgave a predator because
I was afraid to start drama in our friend group
two weeks later he assaulted someone else.
I’m still carrying the guilt in my purse.

There are days I forget we had to invent
nail polish to change color in drugged
drinks and apps to virtually walk us home
and lipstick shaped mace and underwear designed to prevent ****.

Once a man behind me at an escalator
shoved his hand up my skirt
from behind and no one around me
said anything,
so I didn’t say anything.
Because I didn’t wanna make a scene.

Once an adult man made a necklace
out of his hands for me and
I still wake up in hot sweats
haunted with images of the hurt
of girls he assaulted after I didn’t report,
all younger than me.

How am I to forgive myself for doing
nothing in the mouth of trauma?
Is silence not an active violence too?

Once, I told a boy I was powerful
and he told me to mind my own business.

Once, a boy accused me of practicing
misandry. “You think you can take
over the world?” And I said “No,
I just want to see it. I just need
to know it is there for someone.”

Once, my dad informed me sexism
is dead and reminded me to always
carry pepper spray in the same breath.
We accept this state of constant fear
as just another component of being a girl.
We text each other when we get home
safe and it does not occur to us that
not all of our guy friends have to do the same.
You could literally saw a woman in half
and it would still be called a magic trick.
Wouldn’t it?
That’s why you invited us here,
isn’t it? Because there is no show
without a beautiful assistant?
We are surrounded by boys who hang up
our naked posters and fantasize
about choking us and watch movies that
we get murdered in. We are the daughters
of men who warned us about the news
and the missing girls on the milk carton
and the sharp edge of the world.
They begged us to be careful. To be safe.
Then told our brothers to go out and play.

The year of Skinny Pop and sugar-free Jell-o cups,
we guzzled vitamin water and *****,
toasting to high school and survival
complimenting each other’s thigh gaps.
Trying diets we found on the Internet:
menthol cigarettes, eating in front of a mirror, donating blood
replacing meals with other practical hobbies like making flower crowns or fainting.
Wondering why I haven’t had my period in months
or why breakfast tastes like giving up
or how many more productive ways I could have spent my time today
besides Googling the calories in the glue of a US envelope.
Watching America’s Next Top Model like the gospel
hunching naked over a bathroom scale shrine
crying into an empty bowl of Coco Puffs
because I only feel pretty when I’m hungry.
If you are not recovering, you are dying.
By the time I was sixteen, I had already experienced being clinically overweight, underweight, and obese.
As a child, “fat” was the first word people used to describe me
which didn’t offend me until I found out it was supposed to.
When I lost weight, my dad was so proud.
He started carrying my before-and-after photo in his wallet.
So relieved he could stop worrying about me getting diabetes.
He saw a program on the news about the epidemic with obesity.
Said he is just so glad to finally see me taking care of myself.
If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital.
If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.
So when I evaporated, of course everyone congratulated me on getting healthy.
Girls at school who never spoke to me before stopped me in the hallway to ask how I did it.
I say, “I am sick.”
They say, “No, you’re an inspiration.”
How could I not fall in love with my illness?
With becoming the kind of silhouette people are supposed to fall in love with?
Why would I ever want to stop being hungry when anorexia was the most interesting thing about me?
So how lucky it is, now, to be boring.
The way not going to the hospital is boring.
The way looking at an apple and seeing only an apple, not sixty or half an hour of sit-ups is boring.
My story may not be as exciting as it used to, but at least there is nothing left to count.
The calculator in my head finally stopped.
I used to love the feeling of drinking water on an empty stomach
waiting for the coolness to slip all the way down and land in the well,
not obsessed with being empty but afraid of being full.
I used to be proud when I was cold in a warm room.
Now, I am proud I have stopped seeking revenge on this body.
This was the year of eating when I was hungry without punishing myself
and I know it sounds ridiculous, but that **** is hard.
When I was little, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said
“small.”

God your name
feels so foreign to write
those five letters once
told me what I thought my future would be.

I speak it as infrequently as possible,
nearly whispering it when I must.
As if, somehow, if I speak it too loudly,
I'll lose myself in it all over again.

The soap in my shower smells like you,
so I bought my own.
I was left wondering what you were doing,
at 4:36pm on a Sunday afternoon.

You favorite color appears
in the strangest places, unexpected.
I know it should go unnoticed,
why did you have to love such a bright color?

my body almost forgets what it feels like
to be loved by you
my lips almost forget the taste of you
and then it all rushes back

"England, ah."
Green and pleasant;  full of pleasant trees.
Cottages of chocolate looks, from story books.
Scribes from days gone by, using erstwhile language ,The Baird and Marlowe, E.A.Poe, to name but a few.
Poesy of poets, all rhyming in time, in sonnets and linnets, that tweet from the trees.
Towers of history, subliminal mystery.
Queens and kings and royal things, of palaces and promenades.
Our nation of knights, dames, ladies and gents.
Tatty old flats with extortionate rents, stately, homes and messy houses.
Farms of smells and beasts of burden.
Of pantomime horses, and grassy race courses.
Seashore and see moor.
(C) LIVVI

A/N: This poem probably makes no sense but after listening to a few Blythe Baird poems I felt inspired to write something like this.



The life of a woman can be challenging
The life of a woman can be an uphill  battle that sometimes we just do not want to fight
Women can be born in hospitals
They can also be born trapped in masculine jail cells
Some people say that sexism is dead
But then they remind us to always carry pepper spray in the same breath
And I begin to wonder if being a woman is a curse or a blessing
Surely things had to improve by now
We are not in the twenties after all
But dread settles in the pit of my stomach like stones at the bottom of a river
When I remember reading that we had to invent nail polish that changed color in drugged drinks
Lipstick shaped mace
Develop apps to walk us home
And underwear designed to prevent assault
I wish I could go back
Back to a time before womanhood hit me like a truck
Back to a time before *******
And periods
Before I knew about all the sharp corners of the world
I often think of if I want to change the world
I do
And I do not
Somedays I want to write acceptance into existence
Some days I just want to hide from the weight of responsibility
Crushing me like a ton of bricks
I shudder as I remember the nights a man twisted my will by calling me, baby
Talking me out of conversations I knew I should have brought up sooner
I want people to see women as people
Most importantly men
We are not your  playthings
We are not objects you can twist and mold to your desires
We are not a piece of candy for your eyes
I want everyone to realize these things
But I will try and coat my words in sugar
I will try to make these words easy to hear
Easy to read
I will try and soften the impact of reality
I will try and make these words
This poem easy to swallow
Like a microscopic pill
I will try and make reading this easier than it is for us women to live

I may be mad as hell,
To take anymore or not, is the question,
While flying over the Cuckoo’s nest, the test,
To be or not to be a Baird man,
Or to let it be, a Salieri,
Shall I join a dead poet’s society,
Even though it is not propriety,
And leave the quest of middle- class morality,
Amid the view of blind reality,
Or finally,
Leave the world’s delusional bag of tricks,
And escape completely, out of the matrix.