House of Boys
I can’t go back to
The house of my youth
I only remember it
In photos
Four boys sit on my bed
Their bodies lay beside mine
Yet, there is no malice in their eyes
Two brothers play with me in the mud
The hose drenches our clothes
Yet, I’m not worried if they can see through
Ten neighbors celebrate my Buzz Lightyear birthday
I stuff my face full of cake
Yet, I don’t worry if I get fat
I can’t go back to this house
Because these boys still live there
But now they’re men
And the house is no longer safe
When I lay beside him
He rubs me up and down
When my shirt gets wet
He ogles at my tits
When I indulge in sweets
He says he won’t fuck
I try to leave
This house of men
But they hold me hostage
Say I’ve got to pay to leave
I give them my body
That’s not enough
I give them my heart
That’s worthless to them
I give them my mind
My spirit
My soul
They still won’t let me go
Celebration Consolidation
I find the birthday parties of my youth
Often blurring together into one
One big blowout
Just for me
The house appears as two stories
Filled with appearing stories
The ten of us gathered around the table
Birthday girl ready to blow out her candles for the camera
TV camera zooms in on her
Born 9/11/2001
A brave soul she is
And a news story just to show it
I don’t feel odd, despite the disguised discussion of terrorism
A minute later I play freeze dance
Girls jumping, having fun
So when the piss trickles down my leg, I don’t leave
All cleaned up with underwear not mine
We race to the basement
Beatles posters framed down the railing
I awe at seeing my fixation
Before I know it, a chase has begun
I’m the seeker and I’m seeking with my tongue
Don’t let me lick you that’s the game
And I’m a sore loser
I’m down on all fours, clawing up the stairs
Screams of terror fuel my desire
Feed my speed
Who knew a pudgy girl could move so fast
Doors slam against my face
Dust blown and coating my tongue
A palette cleanser is what I need
And these girls are it for me
Like a sniper I hunt my targets
Tongue pressing against their bodies
One leg, one arm, one neck, one palm
Eventually, I snipe them all
Out of breath, the game ends
We go to play Guitar Hero downstairs
My mom calss the house, my friend brings me home
Turns out my sister broke her arm
Party time is done
At the top of the slide, the boys make fun of her leg hair
She didn’t understand She didn’t know
Was that not where hair was supposed to grow?
She slid into their big scheme, each night with a microscope
She makes sure there are none She makes sure nothing spikes
Is this really what boys like?
At the bottom of the slide, she looks back up She sees boys, not men
She sees how little they are Do things seem different from this far?
Years later when boys says the same thing about her pussy, down there will grow teeth and bite off their weens
Grandmommy
She beat my mother
Once for being friends
With a black man
She judged others
Even myself
For their beliefs
She pushed us
Out of her home
So much screaming
She died nine years ago
She also showered
Me in gifts
Always so thoughtful
She also made Mountains of bubbles
In my jacuzzi tub
She also let me
Sit on her lap to Ride on her scooter
Guilt pits in my stomach
To speak so ill
Of my own blood
Yet hate is what fills
My memory of Our time together
Maybe it’s okay
To forget And move on
Think of the times
I enjoyed
Let them rise
Grandmommy
You loved me
And me, likewise
Water Bottle Chocolate Milk
You want to be the girl with a bunch of friends
Easy enough
Until you’ve got to keep them around
It’s like a goldfish you forgot to feed…
No
It’s like your favorite jeans not fitting your belly
No
It’s like when you put chocolate milk in a reusable water bottle to drink before bed as a sweet treat, but you shouldn’t put chocolate milk in a water bottle because you can’t see it, it’s not in plain sight, so you forget it’s in there and it sits in your room for days and when you finally remember it the milk has spoiled and there’s mold in the bottle and you just have to throw it all away
That was my favorite bottle
To Victoria Chang
I never imagined myself good enough to write poetry
Big words exposing my emotions
Couldn’t understand the famous ones with their vocab
Akeelah and the Bee couldn’t be me
Chang caused a change in me
“Money” helped me remember me
She wrote poetry simply for every layman to read I close my eyes as she lulls me to peace
A path is opened right in front of me
I can write just as she
Tomboy
Today at work, a tomboy girl walked in with her parents to buy clothes. They wander around our limited kid’s section, the girl zoning in on the boys’ clothes while the parents roll their eyes. She makes her way to the dressing room begrudgingly with her unhappy mother. The father asks me what pants we have. I show him the options, the last ones being pink and he quickly rebuts “Oh no, she won’t wear pink,” as though it’s a burden on his point. By the end, the girl walks up to the register gleefully with her finds as her parents pay in defeat.
I used to be that girl. Never understanding the gender norms of society, rebuking the pink propaganda. I look back on her now, here right in front of me. I wish I could tell her to let go of the fear. To quit protesting her femininity because it’s not something to be ashamed of.
I want to give her a feminine embrace, probably the first she’s ever had.
Mitski
I can’t be her
She pulls the tears from my eyes
Says what I want to say
Much more eloquently than me
I’m the idiot
Trying to be like her
Even now copying her diction
Passing it off as my own
My brain is not what I supposed it to be
If I gave up on being smart
I wouldn’t know how to survive
Creativity stifled
Now extracting it, painfully impossible
You’re not supposed to pull out adult teeth
I want to swap my brain for hers
Steal it in the night
Let her feel the emptiness I do
Change My Mind
Their third date
They lay together in the sharp grass lot behind the ice cream parlor
As with any third date
She confides to him her lack of interest to find herself a birthing mother
Their tenth date
They sit together on the cozy back porch of his aunt’s home
As with any tenth date
He slips into the conversation that his parents don’t mind if they don’t get grandkids
Their hundredth date
She sees a future with him
A future she didn’t imagine before
A future where being a mother isn’t the worst job she could think of
Playroom
My room at 22 looks like a child’s:
My bed piled with stuffed animals
And every night I still sleep
With the one I got when I was 2
Who I would bring to school with me,
The fear of my house burning down making me hold him close
The little figures of Hello Kitty and other cutesy characters line my shelves
I always carry a couple of them on me
I like to imagine they have the power to keep me happy
I don’t think it’s working
The chipped paint on the walls revealing the turquoise
I requested when the light pink behind it was too girly
Now I peel it back to go back
I still sleep with a night light
Just like when I was little, the darkness lets me think too much
Premature maturity robbed me of my adolescence
Adults want me to forget
Pack up the pack-and-play
Although never started Playtime is over
Now I hoard every last bit
Funny Little Guy
I enjoy buying eccentric things
I devour their demeanors
Fueling my lackluster personality
Now I’m interesting
Heifer
What my mother calls herself
In old pictures we pull from a dusty box
I resist the urge to tell her
She’s skinnier than me in those pictures
I pick the picture apart
Cradling her in my hands
Wrap my eyes around her waist
Scaling the scale
The measuring tape gets bigger
But not my bigger
She keeps repeating
Fat heifer
What a fat heifer
That’s when I was ugly and fat
I want to burn the photo
Burn the calories off her
Don’t I look like your sister in this photo?
Just much fatter
So…me?
Maybe the tears I shed
Will shed the pounds for her
The picture is placed back in the box
I’ll forget this ever happened
Until we see that heifer again
A Child At Heart (And Everywhere Else)
My birth was my downfall
The catalyst of it all
It’s when my parents locked me up
Labeling me a child for eternity
In elementary school
My little popular self
Received invitation after invitation to coveted sleepovers
But only declines returned
People decline to understand the turmoil
Turning their heads to such propensity
Why not break free, leave the nest, break the bond?
My independence is a hostage
An adult I may seem
But a child I be
Growth in reverse
Benjamin Button bets on me
Why can’t I leave?
Can’t you see?
I’m a woman
THIS is how it’s going to be
So why not accept this defeat
In a way,,, I feel free
She Waits
When your girlfriend won’t stand up for her independence, trembles in fear of dismission and refutes the belief of query, you warn her against fighting herself rather than her parents, but you perceive her pensiveness and dread she has succumbed to the silent wait of true independence
Tipping Tower of Tokens
My parents never let me play at arcades
Waste of money
A dangerous place
I like to use that as an excuse for my childish nature
I didn’t arcade enough
So last Saturday
I arcaded
My boyfriend and I directed the kids within Directly to the kid’s korner
I spent so much money
I hyper fixated on the machine of my dreams
Decked out with brilliant blind boxes
I sucked
The girl next to us arcaded like no other
A wad of tickets tempting my sticky fingers
How did you get all those?
My boyfriend inquired
His soft voice falls on deaf ears
How did you get all those?
I ask
She answers me
My worries drift from dominating the game
To the reverence of the one I love
Despite towering over others
He trembles behind me
I push and shove us around the place
Placing him in last of every game of confidence
The claw machine is not the only thing I control
But I can’t let go
Can’t waste my tokens
Tokens of love
I’ve used them up Gambled them away
I’m done arcading
Untitled
My work, processed
Precisely picked apart
Am In in there?
Is she still left?
I don’t feel her
Don’t detect her warmth
Are my words wrong?
The way I represent, How I share me, Did I do it wrong?
Will the rules bend
Under my pain?
Or must I always
Consider the stanzas?
Author Bio
Emma Knaack is a senior professional writing and creative writing major minoring in business administration with a teaching English language learners and honors concentration at the University of Indianapolis. She served as managing and submissions editor for Etchings magazine and now is the president of the creative writing RSO and a member of Phi Alpha Epsilon. Her work has been published in Etchings, Manuscripts, and Outrageous Fortune while also winning the Edith B. Hagelskamp Carmony Award, Effie Topping Gott Award, Professional Writing Award, Ferlini Nonfiction Essay Prize, and being runner-up for the Lucy Munro Brooker Poetry contest and Roberta Lee Brooker Fiction contest.