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 from these
Salty waters that run
Through your veins like rivers
Or are your waters rough?
Waters left unexplored, needing to be tamed
A tsumani trapped in a body
A reckless laugh framed with unbrushed hair
No one can catch flowing water
Fragility
I am tired of being compared
To fragile delilahs and the summer time sun
I am no song bird with a lilting voice
not a lullaby to sing you to sleep
But instead I am the thunder
That wakes you up from your nightmares
And rattles your bones
The pitbull
That your mother doesn’t want in her home
With a locking jaw
And nasty snarl
Been locked in a cage and taunted
Far too long
Do not compare me to
Fragile delilahs and summer time sun
Soft rains and whispering winds.
Compare me to the roar of ocean waves
Before a tropical storm
How my voice drowns out all the rest
With dirty words
Tell your friends how I am the thorn
And not the rose
Tell your mother and father
How the moment I walk into the room
Your blood runs cold
Ariel Galvez is a junior at Binghamton University studying English in hopes to become a high school English teacher in the future. She is a strong advocate of both art and feminism which is made evident by her often misinterpreted Sylvia Plath “Lady Lazarus” quote on her arm.