don't f
forget!
Pretend Let’s pretend when I wade in water and stare at my reflection, quaking in movement scattered by the dying grasp of the sun, that it’s exactly what it is there. Let’s pretend that I set myself on fire, that I like it, lets pretend I doused all the flames myself, that there’s no smoke curling from the top of my head. There’s a picture of me as a young child in a blazer, meant for a grown man. me in a business man costume with curling pink ribbons. Let’s pretend that when men put their fingers or mouths on women they do it to reanimate themselves, let’s pretend thats what we’re all here for to sweat, bleed, suffer just to stare down at ourselves again. Freshly wet and dumb. As a child I played first princess in a play, the other girls brought stiff holiday dresses and Halloween costumes and my mother made mine from sparkling blue fabric. Tiara white gloves.
Let’s pretend like no one suggested this game to us like we wouldn’t rather play tag or fling ourselves off the swing at the highest peak in the sky. I play pretend too, or lie, whatever. but I never want a pretend forced on me a second hand pretend factory made and manufactured. My pretend will always be homemade, at least, an attempt to get it to lay flat across my back and drape off me comfortably.
Demree McGhee
LAWTON, OK That greasy pan handle of deep fried hope, where the ground is sticky with blood, so when you strain to leave you’ll shoot right back to where you were born, on a crumbling plain that goes on and on and on, you have nowhere to follow but on and on and on, while the church moans oh oh oh.
Your grandma’s outstretched hands contain the only source of water which you can only sip from it’s the only water left. All other sources of water, tainted by all that blood on the ground that follows you around town, in the hospital, they take the baby’s footprints with it just to get it over with.
They know, your mother knows, your grandmother knows that you’ll drown in this blood, stuck in the same position you were in at birth than when you died with your tongue dry and sticking to the back of your teeth.
Demree McGhee
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE IN PATH. ARTWORKS BY CALEB WILSON,DEMREE MCGHEE,DOLORES NISSEN,FAMO MUSA,JESSICA CASTRO,KELLY CLEMEN,MALAIYA ERASO,LAUREN GOMEZ, ALLISON SANTANA,ELISA ADY,FARTOON HAGI-MOHAMED,AND ZIMRI ZAPATA. DESIGNED WITH LOVE IN SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 2020.