Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Mind you, that’s above your comprehension

But a body-strike that-an object, a plaything

A dish to be sampled to satisfy some sick craving

Never mind that you don’t even know her name,

Much less her personality, her interests, but it’s just a game

To you isn’t it? It’s not as if she really has time to give

A damn, what with everything heaped upon her just to live!

Between the driving, and the career, the shopping, the cooking,

The raising the children, the endless workouts, the starving herself to keep looking

Just as skinny as you could damn well please, thank you very much! The night class,

The no-sleep, the three-minimum-wage-jobs-just-to-make-rent, but she’s just a piece of ass

To you, isn’t she? She could be rich, she could be poor, she could be young (but not older the twenty,

‘cuz that’s gross), she could be happy or sad, smart, or dumb, and you’d know this and plenty

More if you would just look at her face, or rather into its

Eyes, for then you’d see intellect, emotion, reason, anguish, anger, and not just tits

And an ASS. Which is WHAT YOU ARE by the way. Or at least what you become when you turn her from woman into statue, from human into portrait, from full person in to some

Perverted fantasy which you’ll soon tuck away, among the others. The ones brought

To you by the media barons: “we’re only giving them what they want!” (or have bought).

Or perhaps they’re not given to you, but chosen, selected, sought out, taken BY YOU,

By countless hours scanning magazines, the Internet, hell, even your “friends’” Facebook

Photos. Because, let’s be honest, if you really valued their friendship, would you look

At and think about them in that masculine, mortifying way? But it’s fine,

Because all other men do it all the time, don’t they?

You simply HAVE to look, and of course, talk about it, for what if they say you’re gay?

Seriously, what if? Why would that be so bad? Who you love makes no difference! And certainly to be

Stripped of your manhood is by frat boy nimrods is far superior to participate in their misogyny!

But it’s not just frat boys. It’s every-male-role-model-that-you’ve-ever-had. And you wonder

Why so many people think feminists hate men? (Which is a blunder,

I might add, of which I’m living proof) Culture says you must be woman-dating

Woman-staring, woman-baiting, women-trapping, woman-hating

Woman-raping, woman-beating, woman-rating!

Woman starving, Woman straining, woman yearning, woman needing,

Woman drowning, woman wanting, woman dying, woman bleeding…..

Woman struggling, woman striving, woman stretching, woman reaching

Out, woman meeting other women, women together, at last teaching

Each other, “Sisterhood is powerful!”, women awaking, women fighting

Back against everything they’ve ever been told that they must or mustn’t, women writing

Manifestas, books, articles, magazines, ‘zines, blogs, tweets,

Women marching on the streets,

Shouting, “I’m A SLUT! (AND PROUD OF IT!)”, “MY body, MY choice!”

“Revolution, Grrrl-style, now!” ,women together, at last, finding their voice,

Their means of resistance, their goals and demands, the chains that they all share

And that some have and others don’t (like race or poverty), intersections laid bare,

Like patriarchy before it! From diversity springs unity, but also acceptance: Everyone should care!

“Real men are feminists!” “Women’s rights are human rights!” All the progress made,

All that is being made, and all that will be made! And they say feminism’s dead! Forbade,

Perhaps, or maybe suppressed, because it is radical, this notion that women are people. But for all this,

Everything that women have achieved on their path to be seen as full people, you seem to miss

Its entirety. For where I see a human being, you only see a body.

MALE PRIVILEGE
by C. Askew

Give me the shovel.
Give me the tattoo gun’s kiss on my skin.
Give me the hard day’s work.
Give me the graveyard shift.
Give me the white van.
Give me lager and the night.
Give me the warship and the race car.
Give me the walk home alone.
Give me the chainsaw.
Give me the streetlit alleyway.
Give me the roadmap’s cryptic veins.
Give me the fearless midnight park.
Give me the swagger.
Give me the paycheque.
Give me the wet-dream and the punch-up.
Give me James Bond and Action Man.
Give me walls to build in the baking sun.
Give me the engine.
Give me the motherboard.
Give me the budget and the Bible.
Give me strength.
Give me the steel-toe-capped boots.
Give me brass knuckles and a big dog.

Now look at me. Now tell me I can’t.

against one another, as if attempting to ignite a fire between

two friendly sticks. The result: a broken dish

or another proclamation that “This cup…plate…bowl is cracking.”

The washed skin on my hand is growing apart, like the leather on

a cow’s back, and it goes down the drain, and gets cozy with the debris

along with the blood that came from cleaning knives too quickly.

You scurry around the kitchen, telling me about your day

as you shove the dishes into their proper places. The plates go

above the larger plates, and ceramic cups go into a different cupboard

next to the other things that aren’t identical in size and shape.

And if I were a bowl, I would be put in my own cupboard…

or I would be with the forks, beside the spoons, next to the drain,

so that I could be close to all of the things that left me. Then again,

I don’t like drawers. It’s difficult to be open-minded in closed spaces.

she likes to sip mauy tais while staring at guys and watching movies waddle across the television screen. the girl likes to tell the truth but is more comfortable with lies.

she kissed one of her boyfriends in secret because of his blue eyes, her girlfriend in secret because of her second pair of lips, and man that she carnally desired behind closed doors because of the extension between his hips, while

still touching finger tips with her girlfriend. Sometimes she wished that they were all just friends. The guys and the girl… and the other guys that are not mentioned. She wishes that she could sit in an apartment alone, while her girl and those guys pendulum closely by, and she can experience large landscapes from her bedroom window.

the girl wrote stories where women negotiated sex. where they undressed for lovers like those clothes were worn to be unbuttoned, unzipped, untied and undone. the girl wrote adventures that only characters can know, she scribbled in secrets that she, herself, could never share. her stories collect her feelings and retells them.

her stories were her compromise.

Peak of the women’s lib movement.

New York, New York.

Peak of the peak.

She was going for a PhD in psych.

She could, thanks to Betty Friedan.

“After you finish your PhD,” he told her,

“We’ll move to Long Island.

Have three or four kids.

Buy a house.

With a white picket fence,

And a rose garden.”

She was nineteen.

She fell for it.

A week after the wedding

He got fired.

It wasn’t such a surprise.

Between the mental illness

Never showing up

And long sick leaves

It was just a matter of time.

“I won’t get a job immediately,” he told her.

“You can type anywhere.

I have to do something important.

I have to have a career.

I’m the man of the house.”

She felt like she had been slapped.

You can type anywhere.

Well, she could.

And since he wasn’t getting a job,

She had to.

She couldn’t finish her PhD dissertation.

She was working too many hours.

When she wasn’t working,

She was cleaning his toilet,

Cooking his dinner.

You can type anywhere.

It would ring through her head for years.

She typed for thirty years.

He rarely worked.

She never finished her PhD.

Never moved to Long Island.

Never even bought an apartment.

There was only one child, a girl.

(After nineteen years. He was impotent.)

There was certainly no white picket fence.

Definitely no rose garden.

After 36 years of no rose gardens,

36 years of severe mental illness,

She finally couldn’t take it anymore

And put him in a nursing home.

She told all this to her daughter.

You can type anywhere.

She quoted it bitterly,

Angrily.

She would never forget it.

Her daughter wouldn’t, either.

Don’t be like me, she said.

Don’t fall for that.

Don’t fall for the picket fence.

Don’t fall for the rose garden.

Don’t listen when he says that you can type anywhere.

The only typing you’ll do is legal briefs.

You can, thanks to Betty Friedan.

Poetry spouts like jewel-encrusted bullets

From my chapped lips

Soul shining like a beacon

Behind my eyes

Creating tiny worlds

With each sleepy sigh.

Beautiful is a fecund seed inside

Empowering all, despite the lies.

And I’m sick of the things you do,

I’m sick of the things you say,

And how you insist you have your own way,

For how can I forgive someone who can’t respect me and the choices I make,

A person who turns every rule I make into a rule to break?

My body is my temple and what happens to it is for me to decide,

And no, it is not just a matter of pride!

Shower me with all the sweet words you can say,

But I am not one you can easily sway,

You can try to make me cry out of guilt and sadness,

But it is all emotional blackmail I will not process.

Call me unlovable and stupid,

But that’s okay; I’m not desperately waiting for cupid,

For I will only accept those who are good and until I’ll survive,

Believe me, alone I will thrive,

I would rather be in seclusion, than to give in to your illusion.

I thought about with assiduity and devotion,

I assumed the sentiments were requited so I trusted you of my own volition,

As time went on I came to see,

That there was no benevolence for me,

For your transparency overshadowed your pseudo-clemency.