Creative | Posted by Tiffany C on 05/3/2013
Barbie
Let me ask you this:
What do we teach our daughters
When the bestselling doll on the market, Barbie,
Has a made-up face and mascara-ed eyes and lips as pink as grapefruit,
But not enough ambition or intelligence to calculate her net worth?
What do I tell my daughter
when we pass through Toys-R-Us
And she wants that artificial décolletage in a box,
This trickery, chicanery of Mattel
who fashioned this doll, this plastic piece of shit
With a serial number lingering on her lower back like a tramp stamp
Above slim thighs which gap and disproportionate legs,
Legs, I tell her, that would snap beneath
Barbie’s weight if she were real
That would make her fall at the slightest step,
Only for the purpose of mass-production and consumerism
which …
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Creative | Posted by Eden Halo on 04/26/2013
Midas and Medusa
Our suffering was human long before you
Tried to “humanise” it,
Give us the kiss of life,
I am not your wife, I am not your sister
I am not your fucking daughter, sorry to break
All this water
On the embers of you
Deigning, for once, to give a damn
What your friends do to us
By imagining we belong
To you — I will demonstrate
How little you know of possession
As I run
My keys along your car
Til your mouth unlocks, drops open
And I dive down your throat, walk around
In you, the cage
Of your ribs more spacious than
My own, two sizes too small,
Zero, counting down to take-off, space
For my heart all taken
With the frenzied tango
Of me watching you …
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Creative | Posted by Tori A on 02/22/2013
Reborn
The ability to move and be moved by another person, to love and be loved, sends chills down my spine.
To feel another’s emotions intertwined with my own.
The exquisite high of a touch, a smile, a moment, awakens my lungs so that they may breathe in the fresh surroundings you bear.
I once was deaf to the voices of reason.
I once was blind to the changes around me.
But now, I take it all in.
Like a newborn’s first glimpse of the world, you have made me anew.
Like my soul once sat partial, you have made me whole.
Flesh on flesh you consume me.
You take me as I am.
Let me be only grateful to hold you in my arms while I am allowed to.
…
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Creative | Posted by Katie M on 09/21/2012
Hero
We all know I’ve given you everything,
that – as far as I’m concerned sometimes – I have nothing left.
You took it all, because I gave it. Freely, willingly, without hesitation,
you didn’t have to ask.
Sometimes you didn’t.
I’ve given you all my words,
and now I don’t have much more to say.
At least, I won’t, when I finally tell the whole big scary truth –
which, despite my best efforts, I have yet to do.
When I say that it’s all out there… Well, that’s a lie.
Some of my secrets I’m still keeping.
Some of my wounds, well, they’re still bleeding.
You cut me deep, you know, and I can still see the scars.
You said you wanted it to have always been my choice.…
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Creative | Posted by Quin R on 01/13/2012
You See A Body
You see a body; not a person,
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 …
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Creative | Posted by Nicole T on 07/15/2011
The Dishwasher’s Daydream
The sink-washed dishes clap thunderously as you dry them
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 …
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Creative | Posted by Nicole T on 07/8/2011
The Girl Doesn’t Like to Compromise
the girl doesn’t like to compromise.
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 …
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Creative | Posted by Talia on 07/1/2011
He Promised Her A Rose Garden
It was 1976.
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 …
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