#1 e ve rythi ng forg otte n wi ll be r e me mbe r e d
O de
Harriet, Sojourner, Ruby, Rosa, Fannie, Toni Bravery has a face and a name. An ode to the women who will never rise to fame; Bodies so often mutilated we don’t know where to turn to Perseverance is hard when you have no one to run to. The sisters that carry the weights of history The burden is heavy but strength can lead to victory. Women whose beauty is complex and not to be manhandled. An abundance of melanin, so sun kissed, the heavens bathe us with adoration. I don’t know you, but your presence is felt. I feel it when I look at my reflection and choose to smile. I feel it when I rise when others hold me down.
Vanessa Dos Santos
I feel it, shouting on the streets for peace, Saying Your Name To remember we are all not free, but will be. I feel it when my mother holds me when I have had enough And the world has thrust me to my knees. I feel the lashes of judgment-But you suffered the sting of the whip, Stripped with eyes on your body as the blood drips. I feel you as I write these words And faces appear, These women suffered so I wouldn’t have to be in constant fear. I sometimes wake in heat flashes in the middle of the night Is this all worth it when not much has changed. How free are our bodies? When mentally we cannot see beyond the crimson sunset That burns red as another life is shed. Another mother, sister, girlfriend, friend caught in the fire. I must hold on tight the memory of women who came together to conspire. Glass ceilings unseen as our back are used as stepping blocks. Unsung heroes washed away replaced with male parts. You fought for a seat, for freedom, for humanity And were handed short shorts, a welfare label and branded with insanity. I repeat your names as my nightly prayer May my daughters hold the strength that came before me. May they never know the mental torture of being second rate. What did your moments of happiness look like? I paint a picture and I imagine hands holding hands The intimacy of a head on a shoulder Knowing your sisters are there for you As the nights grow colder. I sing, shout , whisper for you, Unsung heroes. Warriors of truth. You fought for my life. The least I can do is remember you.
sparkling in my blood. i left offerings in the cemetery behind the church. i know how to lay hands on myself & speak life. i know how to hold myself together. hold myself together. hold myself when don’t nobody else wanna hold me. don’t nobody know how to hold a womxn like me. i make elixirs from memory & honey. take me to the water to be. transmuted. unsettled. eternal alchemy. i never forget: resistance be a spiritual practice. i touch my heart when it hurts & whisper i’m still living. i write in blood. i don’t speak to passive gods. i rite in blood. when I get weary, i call upon myself. i be my favorite myth. my name be my favorite conjure.
hush i don’t answer to any name you call me. my tongue come from the last feather of the last angel. my eyes be the prettiest serpent eggs you ever did see. my teeth come from the same pearls you threw at me. i smell like rose thorns & river dirt. take me to the water. i got haunting
& hymn in the name of mama-n-em, creatrix and goddess of ack right
de st i n y lov e h emph i ll
oracle reading
When the woman begins to speak I hear my voice, saying Finally, you came.
With a pen and an empty book I came to kneel before her I came to ask what she saw How she suffered How she survived All these sharpened centuries All this silenced time.
I came here to meet the woman. Not your woman Not Pandora, not Mary, nor Eve Not the mother, the wife, the lover Not the virgin, the witch, the whore I came here to meet the woman. Not the make up, the dress or the shoes of a woman I came here to meet the woman. I did not come here for religion, legend or myth I did not come here for your imaginations of a woman I did not come here for your makings of a woman I did not come here to read how you wrote the woman I did not come here to see how you see the woman I did not come here for you I came here to meet the woman.
Ania Jedrzejczyk
Th e Wo man
It was the nights i forgot first, something about the dark, the cold about the stories we told of youth and pirates, her penny roll fingers and peacock eyebrows The days went soon after A father’s friends’ pool heated to a comfortable seventy-seven, surrounded by rusty statues, a chin and her shoulder secrets whispering between our ears And now the stab is back She didn’t warn me she’s a tornado I didn’t warn her I’m an ocean We didn’t listen to our teachers and just kicked off our shoes and – Come lay next to me like we used to. We’ll watch her suck the sweat from my surface. Watch her tumble and twist, a spiral staircase from the door to your room, the fog rolling back at me outside the window, salty buckets, hills like claws in the morning mist.
Granger Tripp
n ow t h at w e’v e grow n
“You know, we are all governed by the fragility of beauty, And the wonder of it all, is that to exist is in itself remarkable.”
I There we wereBlue skies, brown eyes, clarity. Soft skin, svelte lips, vanity. It was a sweetly unremarkable day, And with no idea what would come my way I turned to him and said in a cherry-flavored giggle:
II I woke up the next morning to the sound of trains churning past me. A wail waylaid by my throat trapped the tears threatening to stain my cheeks And so there i stayed, maybe for weeks In a musty grey square Wilting away without a care. What happened? I had dreams I was a flower ruined, But I was holding hope I had a stem still strong. I kept placing petals back into sepals I kept placing petals back into sepals Back into the sepals, But the petals always fall. I guess I truly might be dead, after all. It was a calm nightmare, In this musty grey square, Dreaming up the beauty of a lost world. I tried to break out of there, Yet I couldn’t shake the fact I was a flower no morethere was violence in this silence i couldn’t ignore.
T he A f t er mat h III I was warned self-preservation had no voice, Defiantly I managed to whisper still; No. No. No. I was supposed to have a choice.