"Here are poems steeped in love, stitched with loss."
Jason Myers, ECOTHEO REVIEW
http://www.ecotheo.org/2018/06/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-men/
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POEM I WROTE INSTEAD OF LISTING THE NAMES OF EVERY BOY AND MAN WHO HAS ASSAULTED OR HARASSED ME
I need a poem like an ice pick
like an ice pick needs a fish
a nice slithery target
below the thick frozen layer
holding its dead sticks.
I wear outrage like a hair shirt
scary and close to the skin
prickles covering the zipper down the back
which I can’t reach anyway.
Everyone knew, including you.
Some kept secrets, others spoke up, and these
were identical gestures in that they changed nothing.
When the ice melts, it releases
the thousand-year diseases
and those might kill us
before the living water sets us free.
I need a poem like a neutron bomb
flooding cells on a mitochondrial level
lighting up neural pathways and epidural channels
bloom after bloom touching everything.