My hair is not a raven's wing,
A wave of black, a river whose
treacherous shores
you long to explore.

My ******* are no doves: soft and fluttering;
No Promised Land of milk and honey:
there is no one to welcome you home.

My stomach is not a valley of wonders
leading to a treasure so many men
have died for.

My eyes are not slanted windows to some
ancient Eastern wisdom; no obsidian pools
that many great warriors have drowned in.

My features are not exotic
My skin is not silken
My soul is not unknowable
My mind is not inscrutable
And my body is not your muse.

Delicacy in its purest form
Might have cried a tear tonight
Torn a chipper down foreworn
Tickled pink in fright

She wants to ****
To die in black
Not so simple anymore
She’s aches and whack

Can she feel the naught?
Cultural worthlessness
She is an endearment
They’ll **** her if she’s anything more

Baby

See I never understood
The kind of humor they posses,
They make jokes about hate crimes
And call a man gay for wearing a dress,
And I never would have thought
That these people could make such a mess
And then tell us
To clean it up
Like it wasn't them.

Always falling for the bad guy
Because he never got a chance,
And ignoring what's wrong with him
Until we’ve got blood on our hands,
And I never would have thought
That he could make such a mess
And then tell me
To clean it up
Like it wasn't him.

They always ask us to smile
But they never understood,
They tell us we belong in the kitchen
But if they were us they never could,
They say “go wash the dishes”
Just like a woman “should”.

See I just don't understand
The kind of humor they posses,
They make jokes about ****
And shame the sizes of our chests,
And yet we continue to praise the bad
Over and again,
These girls’ minds were stolen at the age of ten.

They’ve taught us to close our mouths
And they tell us to shut up,
We were raised by the same women
Who would never give up,
We painted signs,
We said our speeches,
But I guess it's just bad luck,
We can't change people who refuse
To grow up

And I never would have thought
That these people would make such a mess,
Just because she's drunk
It doesn't mean its a yes,
Why has it been so hard to get this through their heads,
“Your overreacting”
Let's all invalidate her feelings instead.

I won’t forget the way your eyes look down upon me
The condescension in your voice
The laughs
I won’t forget the dismissal of my pain
My grief
As the horrors of my inadequacy confine me
Hurt me terribly so
But maybe you like my pain
My fright
I want to prove you wrong
That my life is as worthy as yours
But my throat closes around me
It lists me in
Turns me inside out
Exposes my innards and true dark horrors
That of which I’m nothing
Nothing
Nothing worth more
Your very existence continues to triumph mine
While my own breath wastes away
I want you to hurt
As badly as I do
But I cannot hurt you
You’re too much for me to handle
You eat me away at every core
I hate you
I hate you
Why am I not enough
Why was I cursed in this feeble body
My self pity does me no good
While yours gives you an army
Don’t look at me
I know how little you think of me
I want to cut my throat and bash my arms
Bleed all over you
Give you all of my struggles
Be free of my deference

content warning: sexism, racism, homophobia, ableist slurs, ****** assault, alt-right political commentary, abuse, prostitution

The okra stalks
now wilted
bend beneath
the winds of America’s plains.

As I’ve occupied myself with
a Yankee college’s schoolwork,
my means of feeding myself diminish
as I don’t have the time or energy to

water,
**** the bad bugs,
retie the plants to their rightful stalks,
and finally clean myself off.

Although my family qualifies for “government handouts”
as my momma calls them,
she sends it back every time.
The price?

Hunger gnawing at my stomach,
basic needs left unmet,
my “liberal” professors failing to grasp
what their own students face.

But women don’t deserve an actual education,
because in America’s Bible Belt
the woman’s future is confined
to a Southern home full of sweat and pregnancies.

I can always tell when my momma
runs a deficit on bills.
I can hear it,
although I try not to—

“Thank you for the tip, honey.”
She drawls,
and I know her bedroom door
is locked.

Before I knew what she was doing
when I was too young to know—
I caught glimpses of the different men
as they’d leave.

I don’t know why,
but I hated them all.
One would smoke cigarettes on the porch,
and later I’d kick around the used butts.

Now that she’s older,
she has resulted to
pimping me and my little sister out
against our will—

whether she intended for it to happen or not.
I’ve come to understand that
at least in America’s South,
virginity doesn’t exist.

A woman’s only purity
lies within having the right skin color;
some STDs can be overlooked
as long as they can still populate the Southern landscapes.

For the first time I had seen my momma
in over two weeks,
I greet her with a happy smile while washing dishes.
Her look of disgust remains unchanged.

“You need to register to vote!”
She says, yet I don’t have my driver’s license.
I remain silent.
I can hear the political commentary over the radio:

“String ‘em up,
shoot ‘em down!
Stop being so autistic,
and abide by the Party doctrine!”

Being in the South,
I know what the Southern gentleman meant
over the radio,
yet I still find its charged language alarming.

String ‘em up: Hang the Yankee professors who help me
Shoot ‘em down: Put down the “rioters” and “looters”
Autism refers to following rules of governance,
and the Party…

When my little sister registered
as a lesbian liberal,
momma never raised that much Hell.
She went off with a man for a few days to cool off.

I remember crying,
kneeling before my nativity set and the cross in my room,
hands clasped in prayer,
begging God to inform me on what to do.

I’ve tried to be a good Southern girl my whole life,
despite not being white,
being born into a single parent household,
and living in poverty.

I tried to be educated as a means of providing for my family.
However, my grandma tells me that’s unnatural.
My momma tells me to stop being stuck in my books
and to get some fresh Southern air.

I am left to ask, pleading for God to tell me
as humanity itself has failed to help me:
How can I be redeemed
from the sin of being born?

tw: mentionings of ****** assault, allusion to suicide, racism, abuse, sexism

“I’m starving,”
mom says,
the empty void of the refrigerator
reflecting the state of her consciousness.

Little sister
clutches at her stomach,
as if willing her hunger away
would make it disappear.

I’ve made fine food,
yet their tongues
still decry their
miserable states of hunger.

Aren't men supposed to provide
the food,
a house,
and authority?

Aren’t women supposed to provide
the meals,
a home,
and emotionality?

My dad solely remains as DNA,
threatening to make me into
an alcoholic like him
if I don’t behave.

My mom’s boyfriend
rules over us women
with cruel dominion,
making us wish we never had feelings

since we just
feel
so
violated.

His Irish tongue has the scrutiny of
the White Man’s burden
over us colored women,
his cruelty unmatched from the state of war.

When he pulls on my hair,
incessantly demanding my attention,
I remember how
he

ruined my mom’s body
after surgery,
tearing her flesh apart freshly stitched together,
and digs in, blood seeping the bedsheets.

I was just
trying to study.
Trying to further my education
of escaping from this Hell

The Hell he threatens me with
doesn’t seem so scary
when I know
the Price:

being a part of his sick fantasy
of having a harem of mother and daughters
tortured and maimed by his hand,
and our cries only met with his wails.

He already has my mother
sewn into his
game of
escaping Hell.

She acts as his demon sometimes
out of fear,
reprimanding me for
daring to keep my door shut

for daring to
not scream,
keep my thighs together
for him.

My tongue strikes
as my only act of defense
in an effort not against him,
but against a betrayal of self.

I am hungry,
in constant fear and panic,
and am knowledgeable of both how his game functions
and my inability to escape it.

Tell me,
how could Hell
be any worse
than this?

As a *****
made by his hand,
I acknowledge that
my only way to Heaven:

My Escape
lies in sacrifice.
As an ultimate display of familial piety
to my mother and sister.

I take a kitchen knife,
pouring some rice onto a plate,
before stabbing my stomach with the blade,
watching as my flesh falls onto the steaming plate.

Now,
I admit with relief,
I will go to Heaven,
and I will not hear them go hungry!

I declare in pure elation,
feeling my consciousness
previously weighed down by the burdens of a woman
finally flying free from my twisted body.

I watch
from the clouds of Heaven,
having made my sacrifice,
and see

flies collecting
over my body;
the plate is untouched.
My halo wavers atop my head.

“Please,” I whisper.
“Don’t let my sacrifice be
for nothing.”
Sister has yet to leave her room.

I recall
feeling terrified myself
when I was within the confines of mortality.
Mom is—

I see her.
She’s eating.
All this time—
she was lying?

The clouds fall from beneath me,
and my wings are plucked,
causing me to experience a pain
that rivals the first time he tried me.

I come back to life
to witness firsthand
him, with a pig-like glint in his eyes,
gouging on the meal I had prepared.

My stomach
now sliding down his esophagus
reels with hatred.
On the brink of life and death once more,

my vision flickers.
I catch glimpses of
the devil’s horns
through his ***** blond hair.

In my final moments,
I am left to ask:
Did Earth ever really exist
in the first place?

My whole life I've been taught to be good.
My whole life I've been told to be nice.
My whole life I've been made silent.

"Don't make people uncomfortable" they said.
"That's a girl's only job."

But I'm on the cold hardwood floor,
tears streaming down my face.
No way to contain these feelings anymore.
This time I won't go with grace.

When I was a girl
my mother trained me to be docile.
"If you ignore them, they will move on" she would say,
brushing the comb through my hair as I whined at every knot she pulled.
I learned to shrink,
to be an unworthy target left less blood in my mouth.
I learned to hide,
if they could not see me there would be no meat for them to pull from my bones.
I learned to be afraid,
because fear is the instinct that has left us alive.

When I was 15,
they told me I was strong
as my spine curved
to keep my head below the water
and the sun off my face,
but the more child-like my disposition
the more they wanted to hear me scream.

Now I am a woman
who pulls her hair into buns because they are harder to grab
and I no longer whine as I pull through the knots
but my eyes still water at the sting.
I have been labeled a *****
rude
bossy
annoying
but I would rather be a ***** than dead.

I used to think shrinking would make me undesirable
but being small did not stop them from devouring me.
So I have grown fangs through this smile,
made myself too big to consume
if they want to eat me
they will have to eat me as I am,
with all my sharpened edges and tough skin.
I am the woman who has grown fangs
and I will not make myself small and easily digestible for anyone anymore.
You may consume me,
but you will bleed for it.