Date Rape Actress
“You’re just an empty cage, girl,
If you kill the bird”
– Tori Amos, “Crucify”
At sixteen, she felt it
when the man gave her
moonshine: that slowing
of blood, strange feeling
of floating out.
And so she became a bird,
buoyed, looking upon the body;
saw it groped, kissed,
discarded, propped against
a tree, mindless, poisoned.
The body, thawing, rocked
back and forth ’til morning, when,
the vomit drying on its …
/ Read ›
I was two or three years old, and nice Mr. Rubinstein, our elderly neighbor from the next building, was my babysitter. I remember lying across his knees while his hand patted my baby tushie in soft strokes. The next thing I remember is all the lights blazing and my mother screaming and screaming.
I was eight years old, walking home from school with my younger brother. …
/ Read ›
Woman & Water
What is it like
To be a woman?
Is it a bare desert?
Empty, the sand the only thing you have
To offer
Watch as it slips through your hands
Like water
Or is to be a woman to be like water?
To be the wilderness of
Rivers and oceans
Wet.
Hemingway notes “la mar”
The feminization or,
Demasculization of language
To show
The wild
Are you a sea that is well-behaved?
Calm but breezy
Helpful and sunny
Mermaids and venus
Have risen …
Talie Zrihen is a first-generation American poet from Chicago. They hand make and self publish their works including big words/little mouth, go f(ind) yourself, and this is not a poem, this is an apology, all released in 2017.
Their work addresses both the political and spiritual aspects …
/ Read ›
As our submission period wrap up & we review submissions for our contest period, our genre editors
Below, Poetry Editor E. Rhōdes speaks with our judge.
ER: How do you incorporate your conception of feminism into your work?
Eileen Myles: Luckily it’s not very conceptual. I was born female and noticed almost immediately that females didn’t get a very good deal. My feminism has been evolving all my life. I definitely wanted …
/ Read ›
