In Their Own Words
No matter how many times I try to add myself to the concoction Or blend in a different breed
Of mango or strawberry, some salt or key lime I always find the drink too bitter
Bitter like the tears that are locked in the cages of my eyelashes
ABW
You think anger is the only emotion I have, and because of this it is only in this emotion that you see me
Everything else I am disappears
Only in my anger am I visible to you.
You don't see that I am hurting
A hurt that comes from the toxic world that I must navigate ... A world that says to me ... don't be too proud, too confident, keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself, don't challenge the status quo
A world in which it is my responsibility to make sure you are not uncomfortable in my presence, lest you feel embarrassed or shamed, lest I reveal your insecurities, lest I make you cry.
A world designed to protect you, suggesting, not so subtly, that I am not entitled to be comfortable in the spaces you have claimed. Where your tears are meet with sympathy, my tears are the harbinger of anger. read as a warning warranting no comfort.
My chains are your embarrassment and shame and they eat away at my very existence.
I yearn for the hurt to go away,
I yearn to be free of the emotional and physical pain,
I yearn for a brief respite that never comes,
I yearn to be unshackled,
So I try to be extra nice, and gentle biting my tongue until I taste my own blood, performing the modern day shuck and jive, so you feel at ease forcing a smile laughing at the joke made at my expense, sharing kind unreciprocated words of support, making sure there is a place for you
suppressing my voice, my identity, my presence, my thoughts, my joy and my hope until they grow inside of me and with no place to go burst out in
ANGER
My sudden appearance is met by your words, salt in my gaping wound
"There YOU are ... l did not see you""
Why are YOU always so angry"
"YOU should have said something, if you were uncomfortable"
"YOU don't look happy"
"It was Just a joke"
" YOU intimidate me"
I stare into your cold eyes while you recite the words to silence and render me invisible again, and I start to embrace my anger While I have not always been angry, anger is part of who I am and I would rather be angry and visible
• L. Phillips
March 29, 2019
5 decades ago Seems like yesterday ey look ferocious, hide Who gets me now?
Oppressed Denial - Expected Way Compliance
Wes ley Strobel
Alu slumped down into his bed, weeping so hard his tears formed branching veins of mascara across his cheeks. Screaming he picked up his notebook and threw it against the bedroom door, the weak binding splitting and sending scrawled drawings and notes across his bedroom floor. He turned away from the pages, unable to stand the look of them. Settling down on his bed he looks at the white ceiling decorated in glow-in-the-dark stars . After closing his eyes and wiping the smears away he sits up and progresses to kneel on the floor. His Pride badge slipping from his pocket and rolling across the floor to settle next to the torn open notebook Angry tears flooding his vision he lifts the papers and tears them to shreds, the letters and drawings becoming littering snow on his floor He screams and kicks and tears at the shreds, throwing them into the wall within his closed fists.
Yelling in rage he opens the top drawer of his wardrobe and disregards the neatly folded bras and underwear, digging to the bottom his hand grasps a lighter. Wheezing with anger he pulls the lighter close to his face and flicks the spark to ignite. In his haste it burns his finger and he yelps, dropping it to the floor where it lands on a sheet of numbers and calculations ; bus paths, phone numbers, and addresses. Slowly reaching down he picks up the shreds in his tired fists and suffocates them in his arms as he carries them to the bathroom
Letting the torn sheets fall into the tub he turns on the fan and again ignites the lighter, scoring the corner of the torn notebook and watches as each sheet slowly in engulfed in flames and incinerates his regrets and worries. When the papers are reduced to ash, he turns on the shower and washes the evidence down the drain. Anything that wouldn't fit he takes back to his room and forces down into his trashcan.
Sighing, he looks to the Pride badge that still lays on the floor Picking it up he grinds his teeth, opens his window and chucks it as far as he can . Taking a few deep breaths, he checks the time and sighs Sliding off his stocking and navy school uniform skirt and gingerly folds them along with his women's cut blazer and sets them on top of the wardrobe. He slips on a clean set of yoga pants and at-shirt supporting a local sub business- his favorite. Neatening up the underwear drawer he comes across his binder and stops cold, holding it in his shaking fists
Hearing the garage door open he jumps and stuffs the binder to the back of the drawer, hurriedly wiping his face with the back of his fists . He hears his mother call from downstairs, "Sarah! I'm home, how was school today?"
Alu puts on a dry smile and walks downstairs, "Welcome home mom, it went very well ."
Oppressed Denial - My Way Rage
Alu slumped down into his bed, weeping. His tears formed branching veins of mascara across his cheeks, creating caverns in the nude blush he applied that past morning. Screaming he picks up his notebook from his book bag and throws it against the bedroom door, the weak binding splitting open and sending drawings and notes scrawling across his bedroom floor. He turns away from the pages, unable to stand the look of them. Settling down on his bed he looks at the white ceiling decorated in glow-in-the-dark stars choking on his tears. After closing his eyes and wiping the smears on his face he sits up and progresses to kneel on the floor in front of his desolated notebook. His Pride badge slipping from his pocket rolls across the floor to settle next to the torn open notebook cover. In which the name "Sarah" has been crossed out and written under was "Alu." Sighing he crawls around and gingerly picks up each sheet of paper and cradles them in his arms. He looks down at the stack and then towards his drawer where he has stashed a chest binder, a stack of 150 dollars and a lighter under his pristinely folded bras and panties. Standing he places the stack of papers on his bed and walks to Jock the door. Returning to the bed he begins fingering through the ink smeared and poem ridden pages; letters to God, Jove notes for Nathan in his 5th period American History Class, drawings of disturbing images later covered over in highlighter hearts. Whimpering, another tear falls from Alu's cheek and lands on a sheet of calculations and numbers. His tear traveling across lines of bus paths, addresses, and phone numbers. Pulling that paper out of his stack he checks the clock sitting above his desk. Quickly he folds the sheet and lays it on his pink and blue tie-dye bedspread and begins ripping off his dysphoric school uniform. White tights, a navy skirt, and a women's cut jacket are thrown into a corner.
Quickly he throws on a pair of oversized jeans and slips on the chest-binder followed by atshirt promoting a local sub joint. He takes out his bookbag and empties it onto the floor, again checking the time and peeking out his window at the empty driveway. Haphazardly he stuffs the bag full oft-shirts, underwear, socks and mischievous tools he has been stealing from the garage (a pocket knife, a hand-held generator flashlight, etc ) and then adds the cash and lighter out from his drawer to the front pocket. Throwing on a sweatshirt and his pink ski-coat he lifts his comforter and pulls out his baby blanket wrapping it around his neck. He looks at the folded sheet and the torn notebook, gently lifting the notebook he wraps it in at-shirt and settles it into the bookbag and then stuffs the folded sheet into his pocket.
He checks the clock a final time and darts for the stairs; zipping his jacket up as he goes. Leaving the pin for his mother to find- so she can damn him to hell and forget him.
Dear Kate,
I am angry at the Pr esident, that was elected. I am mad at his policies. His racist ideologies and plans. I am sick of being sad of the country and looking like a fool. I am sick an d tired of some of my family members supporting these same ideologies and policies. I am DONE I am DONE dealing with them
I am sick and tired hearing some of my family talking about anti-abortion policies and laws I feel defeated every time I see my grandma post another anti-abortion and choice post on Facebook It hurts to look at that when you in fact support it and would get an abortion because I am in no way ready for children I want everyone to know that it is not murder. It is a choice of how and what you as a person has the right to do what they want with their beautiful body.
I am upset with the people that stare at my boyfriend and I. We are different from one another . Racially Please stop staring. We are happy to be with one another and do not appreciate the stares They come from various people, these stares It doesn ' t make it easier. Our parents already have a hard time with it . Please stop . I want to see one day where we don't get any looks. Loving v . Virginia was all back in 1967. I know some of you that stare were from that time , but please stop Would you like to be stared in disgust too?
As a woman, I try not to show my anger towards these people, but it is hard not to avoid an argument I have argued my side and the side I believe to be right, but it shakes people against my point of view so much that they shut down They cannot unlearn what they have learned It is very sad and exhausting to deal with I have tried and tired and each time I get shut out. anything that disrupts their socially constructed views and beliefs.
I am angry anger win. I stay positive andknow that slowly it is hcanging for the but I do not let anger ~Anonymous l\"l'M. EnoughSaid ,
This
Makes Me Angry
Heaven Willis
the people in this room come up with."
"We have the worst laws."
"I would give myself an A+."
"And nobody knows what a community college is."
"The NFL players are at it again - taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their 'outrage' at something that most of them are unable to define,"
"Great pillows I actually use them, believe it or not."
"You know, 1was dealt a lot of bad hands."
"I have had horrible rulings, I have been treated unfairly by this judge," said in June 2016 during his campaign for president. "Now this judge is of Mexican heritage, I'm building a wall."
"That just shows when you get good ratings, you can say anything."
"And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over."
"I have black guys counting my money I hate it," Trump told Joh of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, according O'Donnell's accou only guys I wa ort guys that we
This MakesMe Angry
Heaven Willis
Images Used:
https ://newrepubHc.com/article/122651 /trumps-face https://www.business2community.com/government-politics/23-ridiculously-offensive-donald-trum p-quotes-01284968
https •/twww.politico.com/story/2016/05/bill-kristol-trump-iackass-223737
https://s!ate.com/news-and-politics/2016/03/the-fox-new-debate-in-detroit-was-ugly-and-immatur e-of-course-trump-won.html
https ://nordic businessinsider com/how-china-could-react-to-donald-trumps-tweets-2017-1 / https://www facebook.com/facepalms.r.us/
Qoutes:
https://www.con com/2018/12/20/politics/trump-lines-of-the-year-the-point/index html https://www usatoday com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/14/times-president-trump-com ments-called-racist/985438002/
https://www.politico eu/article/15-most-offensive-things-trump-campaign-feminism-migration-raci sm/
"I've had enough of this Antidote "
I remember the first time I felt it
Smashing my bike to the ground
Throwing the keys that wouldn't stay where I wanted
Cursing gravity
never rests
You're so cute when you're mad, my brother would say He could not face the fire inside a little girl cop. that could burn us all to heaven
Girls don't get mad
Women don't get mad
Anger comes out as tears, misread as weakness
Why is the "source of life" censured for exposing when life sucks?
Who would know better?
How fucked is it that when I scream at my beloved curse him and cut him it's the highest praise and deepest sign of love?
I trust him to see me monstrous and not leave
Our mistake is to say once you feel a thing that's all you are forever I am not rage if I rage I am human I am whole
Rage is a tool: A shield for the tender A voice for the silenced
Relief for the burdened Antidote for the poison we will no longer swallow
Why the HELL are these not 1n the curriculum !!
Briana Foster Professor Birk WGSS 1000
Over time, our society has matriculated different ways to keep people of color enslaved. From American slavery, where Africans were bought and sold to work on plantations to Mass Incarceration, where people of color are incarcerated at the highest rate than any other race ever Did you know that there are about 2.2 billion people incarcerated in the United States? About thirty-five percent of these people are African American. This political/ social issue has been bothering me for a very long time and our Justice System does not instill complete fairness among all trials. People of color seem to always get "the short end of the stick" and systematically we are set up for failure. Usually many people are forced to sit in jail due to the fact that they can't afford an attorney or because they can't afford bail. The system is rigged against us, and for those who have money and those who are white, and therefore more valued in our society Studies show that African- Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than whites for the same crime When does it end? Roughly around the time of the "War on Drugs", the crack cocaine disparity came about. Crack and crack cocaine, are two different forms of the same drug, but one was more affordable (crack). Crack was sent into poor neighborhoods, most likely where people of color lived. Crack cocaine was more expensive so at the time only white people could afford it. One hundred grams of crack was equivalent to one gram of crack cocaine, which means people of color were facing longer, and harsher punishments for using a cheaper form of the same drug as whites used . Barack Obama changed this disparity to 18:1, instead of 100:1. Until this day, we have multiple incidents with police brutality and many of our people died before speaking up for themselves and throughout history we have had to fight and we still have a long way to go.
Briana Foster
Professor Birk
WGSS 1000
Lava In My Veins by
Susan Peck
I never thought I would become so fiery Lava flows through my veins. The passion the anger the hurt. All these burning • I C emotions.
Our leaders are supposed to be strong , intelligent figures. Our politicians representatives, not robbers . Why is America so deranged and dysfunctional right now?
Frustration keeps generating more ._ liquid. My country is going bananas and my personal life brings no relief. This and that, it all boils underneath . Perpetually tired having to remain numb to the insanities
College is supposed to be the best years of your life! But what if they aren't?
Maybe it turned out to be a time, Where my old self meltedaway from lava underneath.
On Anger
One thing that you need to know about my childhood is that I grew up in a very small bungalow that we had outgrown as a family before we ever moved into it. There were three tiny bedrooms for the five ofus, and there was no space in the home to go quiet, hide, or breathe evenly. To this day, my mother and I both hold our breath involuntarily and need to be reminded that we have gone totally still . This is no coincidence.
The other thing that you need to know about my childhood was that my father was a man who spent his entire life in a state of open rage. On a good day , the rage was a low simmer, but I do not recall a day in that house when my father ' s anger did not own every bit of available space. He woke in a rage, smoked his cigarettes with unusual force, began roaring as soon as anything or anyone gave him reason to erupt, aggressively stormed throughout the tiny house, and routinely attacked the four ofus for infractions as trivial as laughing on a phone call or making too much noise while handling the ice tray. His anger was imprecise and unpredictable. You could not anticipate where it would land or how far it would spiral, but you knew that you lived with a live grenade every minute of every day.
Until I was eighteen years old, I did not think it was possible to live without the persistent presence of rage. By then, I had learned to watch for it in others and work tirelessly to minimize it. I dreaded the dissatisfaction of the other , so I strove to be easy and unobjectionable. I feared criticism-no matter how constructive-and avoided any situation that would open me to the judgment of others. I read everything that was not effusive and obvious in its love for me as some form of rejection. A raised voice could paralyze me-literally, paralyze me-and make it impo s sible for me to speak, no matter how low the stakes. Even an unfavorable tone of voice could heighten my fear and send me scanning for a quick way out-of a conversation, a classroom , a relationship.
I can sa y now that I have spent most of my life undoing the effects of anger and its shaping role in my childhood. I recognize that far too much of my self has been constructed as a response to or compensation for--an external rage that I could not control. And , while I do not think that I have built an entirely false self, I am aware of how much was decided for me by the hostility and cruelty of a single person. Sometimes I wonder how differently I might have evolved if I had known a home that allowed me to rest in the knowledge that I was fundamentally good and worthy . I would not have needed much for the outcome to have swung another way.
It may seem strange then that I am writing to advocate for the central importance of anger, as it was anger that d i d the most persistent damage to me as a person. But I now can see that my father's oversized anger effectively starved me of my own. It would have been right and healthy to be angry at the mistreatment, the abuse , the humiliation-but his rage effectively anesthetized me. It overwhelmed me, silenced me , and terrified me. And, ultimately , it distorted my relationship to my own anger, as I never learned how to protest or refuse an intolerable situation. Instead, I learned another much more dangerous lesson: that intolerable situations require silent steady coping . I also learned that the expression of anger-whether righteous or destructive-was possible for others but not for me. I sanctioned a wide berth for anger, as long as it was not my own.
So I have spent my adult life learning how to be angry. Not angry as my father was, because his blind rage was scorched earth and designed to reinforce the vulnerability of others. That is an anger that I cannot do and cannot tolerate in others. Instead , I practice an anger that protects the self, that protects those who are hurting , that directs itself at people and institutions that mistreat and devalue others. I am far better at expressing anger on behalf of others who are forced to believe terrible things about themselves, it is true. I am still figuring out how to use my voice on my own behalf, and I still have to rehearse forms of anger that are, in the end, ethical responses to mistreatment. It is hard for me to reveal my own anger , and that , oddly enough, is what excessive familiarity with rage can do. The paradox has never been lost on me. And it is my life project to undo it , to repeatedly walk the fucker y back where it belongs , and give myself the space to breathe and, when necessary, feel fury.
Tammy Birk
You Favorite Warrior, Elissa st
Hannah Brown : "I Hate it"
Red clouds are all that surrounds me . Festering like a tainted wound . The agony of systematic hate Ugly words spew like a volcanic eruption. I am not meant to speak. I am a woman.
Tape my mouth and silence me with poison. You're ugly JQ,,U're stup id, you'reworthless. Pins and needles on the flesh. You are not meant to hold any power. Only to stay in the binding noose of self-hate I am Black.
The closed walls of simple thought. Plague a complex mind . The bitter taste of complacent thought. Empty promises that everything is fine. It starts to boil over. I cannot \ -- any more . \
I Cannot Speak I Cannot Think I Cannot Dominate I Cannot Succeed I Cannot Breath
The natural life is pumped with toxins. Wilting like a lily in the sun . For all that is given more is taken Blinded by ourselves. Until there is nothing . Nothing .
Nothing but the waste of pride . Until ash is all that remains should I care? t wasn't my fault? Everyone had a hand in it. If I didn' t take they would . I Hate It.
' .
There's a fire on my body
"Words can never hurt me" resonate from within Words burned into my flesh, I feel every burn, with each movemen
Hatred's ink is thicker than blood "Slut! Fag! Bitch!"
Words that cover from head to toe I wanna scream and shout from pain, but I'm shut out
Shut down from all , an unnecessary snowflake
You all will shut me down, but I WILL BE HEARD
Words can hurt me, but I WILL hurt them. Words will tear me down, inside and out
No longer will there be silence, but the fire in my soul will be released I will shut YOU down, I will no longer be a victim to your ignorance
A phoenix rises from the ashes of your hate I WILL be free
"I'm triggered".
I hear it the hallways
A joke
A jab at those of us that know what it's like
To truly be triggered
By rape
By tragedy
By loss of yourself
Raspberry vape fluid
I walked through a cloud yesterday
Immediately my heart started racing
Running Running away from you
I turn
I half expect you to be there
To pin me down again
Triggered
UR by Usher Cologne
The first time we met I sold you that bottle
You wore it everyday
You wore it that night
I smell it
On my professor
Is he like you?
Will he do this to me too?
Triggered
Lemongrass
Our first night together
CONSENSUAL sex
Bodies tangled
Hearts aflutter
Diffuser spilling the citrus scent into the air
The same scent in my grandparents' soap
Triggered
Your name Uncommon
An old Scottish one "war-like"
You seem to be good at that
Starting wars in people
Ones that can't be won
Triggered
That hoodie
Screenprinted galaxy
Your favorite one
You let me wear it and told me I was cute
Cute enough to drug
Cute enough to rape
Triggered
It's not a joke.
--Aryn Valentine
The Sound of Breaking
Shannon Lakanen
If you were here you might have bruises or walk around the block and back, stand close outside the window to find if the room has quieted,
• ifl am back from that place that's all presences and ideas-like the colored and curving schemes that dreams make me feel I have always understood :
the way you cried when you went blank on a question about Auden, the greatest failures of children's ball diamonds,
• the fenced roofs of projects on Lombard Street, but then not any of these at all .
•
I can't remember not wanting to hear fragile things shatter, what coming apart sounds like and what it means to be the one who breaks: whole rooms leafed in portfolio white, phone gone dead again, the spines of books all ragged.
My palm has lines I only see when you trace them. "I'm trying to flirt with you tonight, but I'm not doing a very good job " Open-top bowls of puffy raisins on the counter, marks tipping off a pencil's fresh point, the smell of wet dock planks and rope:
these are what ten years have left
• deep night visions crumpled into sheets, edging the water glass closer to my hand when I wake and reach into the dark.
My mother has told me to have the car key ready when I leave a building, to hold it between two knuckles, and to remember to punch when I'm jumped. But I saw last week that the flowers on Lombard really do grow taller than street signs, and I saw that it takes more than one junior-high boy to make a face bleed. Some things I know only once, and then they last forever.
'
I strain neck backwards out of place constraints held tightly with faint traces of vain,
Hold closely no one hears you again the wretched circle of incompetence the lacking spectacle • c01mnon happenstance hold your broken arms to the sky folded inward in a crooked dance, A beautiful appeasement to the life once lived,
Hastily strewn together in spite of objections and the livid tantrums wrought with jealousy, How long can you stare back at yourself?
The mirror's cracking,
The mirror is asking questions,
, Don ' t worry about the answers keep moving in the undesirable direction face forward face downward smelling the ground hold closely those a.round you throes of demons horde you
p o werless rote memory telling you instructing to move forward,
N o thoughts judgement left in the past higher power leave the work to be done by those who car e,
And why should you?
T here is plenty of work to be done internally,
1 Dri e d blood characterizing synapses , Cr acking under pressure with lackluster hope for a sign of ease, Making a nm for non-existent modalities created by your own delusion,
Softl y floating towards inner peace with sedatives failing to dig out your insides and prove your live lihood ,
Th ey u sed to call this searching for answers ,
Tho u s ands of years wasted on evolutionary standards,
Natural se lection blamed for piss poor manners and false equivalencies fostered by egocentric perception ,
No que stions please I need to recuse myself into the recesses of insanity ,
Vi ewing v ideo foota ge,
So me one poisoned the alphabet soup!
Horr or movie mantra and archetypes lost sight of true vision ,
Unadulterated focus on depersonalizing myself to eliminate recognition ,
Staring back,
Cutting arteries charred bone in peripheral ,
Saved with irony plagued by a too common ritual,
See me now there ' s no difference the space I need reasonable the peace I seek obtainable the truth eludes me of course it does ,
Facing fears with understated ambiguity ,
Absent is the presence of love !
All previous cases ended with suspended sentences, but this case was a prison sentence. The Biased investigation. We accepted this as a biased investigation. This sparked protests. Countless women flocked to protest venues. The women came out to the streets to make a biased judgemennt and denounce illegal filming. They were not located there. because they were not busy with their own life. to raise downgraded rights of woman, to honor women who have been labeling as a victim and took their own life helplessly. They were in the spot of the protesting to seek the right to be human. But coming back was a framing, reproach. mockery at first, and it turned into silence More women gathered together as the sixth protest continued. and 110.000 women were present during the final protest. but 'some' men as well as the media remained silent about the protest. A society that has not responded to 110 . 000 voices. or more. is so frightening that the protests have been wiped
In addition, unlike the Internet's ability to erase all of the files so far and it takes a considerable amount of time and money to erase them, the pictures were erased at a rapid pace. They also figured out the original distributor. Before. they couldn't point out any of ex's who posted sex video or punish them properly, however the thing was different. Sentenced to ten-months in prison.
Allura Stevens 19 March 2019
The Blinding Effect of Existence
IMy lids have grown heavy with all that they've seen. I've lived and lived in my 21 years, Yet some still tell me I'll understand when I'm older Why they've done what they have.
And there's this weird assumption that my process of aging will make me accept this country for the broken, patriarchal mess it has become. But I will not accept it as it is.
bI will use my body and voice and push this country and its people to open their Minds and eyes to see the people Who stand in front of them,
That have always stood in front of them.
I will live my life as visibly as I want to, And no you can't convince me to quiet down, I've only just gotten you to recognize my Very existence.
And just to annoy the hell out of you, I'll hold Hands platonically in public and not at all romantically. My life is nearly never romantic In your sense of the word.
I will live my life as visibly as I want to, And I know it will never live up to your standards.
That's okay with me, though, because I've never found your standards worthwhile Enough to live up to.
Oh, patriarchy, how you hate the Assertive, independent, person I have become. And oh, patriarchy, how I hate the You expect me to be.
Perfectly square box of a Woman
To the Professor who Constantly Misgenders me,
First of all, fuck youT
I told you my pronouns two years ago when I first had one of your classes.
I reminded you on our first class this semester ... . .. and every time you misgendered me in class. My pronouns are in my email signature. My pronouns are on my Ozone student profile. I wear a button with my pronouns.
I wear a shirt with my pronouns.
Your - has turned into Your intelligence hasturned into.all
Your hate has made me not want to attend your class.
My education outweighs your blatant disrespect. My pronouns have and always will be: They/them THEY/THEM THEY MOTHERFUCKING THEM
