Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter

Wooden hands
Bruising random shapes
On my bare thighs.
Wooden hands
Leaving me covered
In rainbow lies.

And when wooden hands
Cross my mind,
They come in the form
Of sunshine.


F.Z.N

Tell me you love me,
As you gaze into my eyes,
Leaving kisses for all to see,
In violet, yellow and cerise.

Show me your fiery passion,
As you scream out my name,
Expletives a mere expression,
Of feelings that drive you insane.

Make me feel your adoration,
With your bruising touch,
With the heart of a nation,
To make me love you as such.

Now these clouds
the cold mean greys
sideways rain, the north lands I remember
the drowning choke of smoke and fire
traveling the dark road to your home
the black and spark of stars
we watched through the night
before the killing dawn
before the foggy cold that held us down
the clinch and grasp a slow stinging wasp
gone the fragrant hum of bees
the honey meadow petals.

Only a fleeting summer - we gathered
now swallowed in the autumn thunder
the bruising cold of November.

The sky crackles and I feel the most alone.

Just like that day in the woods.

My special place was off the trail, but he couldn't have known me,

I was so young and such an idiot,

Not everyone is genuine but I was so trusting,

I can still smell the sickening mixture of fresh-fallen rain,his sweat, the mud around the creek and salt from my tears.

With every atmospheric collision from the sky
my stomach churns tasting the blood in my mouth from his fist thundering against my tear stained cheeks.

When the wind blows  
I can still feel his callous hands bruising and exploring my unwilling body, and scraping against
the most intimate parts of me.

The lightning is when I remember the rock that found my desperate palms and crashing against his temple

The wind howls and the rain finally starts to fall then, near my belly button burns just like it did when the blade he swung wildly cut me before I could run and the water is my heartbeat pounding  in my ears,
but I can hear him behind me
The rush If my blood reminding me I’m still alive mind begging me to stay that way, his threats pushing me further

Head pounding ,body burning,
I burst through my front door

And then I start to cry

child of heart
but not of womb,
would i'd been
gifted to ban the
hope-thieving,
spirit-throwing
parasitic lies,
to shelter ears
& fragile petals
against bruising,
whiskey-glazed
acts and words.
would i might be
gifted now to
soothe, cradling
tender soul through
deadest night's
watery gloom.
yet firmly i know
none other will ever
be gifted to bestow
what only One balm
can perfectly renew,
and He waits for you,
my beautiful girl.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a ****** sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on ****** feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

She gnawed at his flesh
She clawed at his skin
To fulfill her filthy sin
Violence
And rage
All this displayed
All of her hate
He wore on his face
And in the evening
After the bleeding
Pass the bruising
Red marks
He’d sniff and snuffle
His body would crumble
With all of the despair in his heart
He was told to remember
As his will was dismembered
And his spirits were crushed to the ground
This was all your own doing
Even though she was stewing
No fault of hers will ever be found

Promises are evil
Mouths open awaiting
To be filled with blood
Sometimes bones
Other times hope
They make you sell
Another man for nickels
They make you
Bury life to avenge the dead
I despise them so
For they demand too much
Often bruising, often enslaving.

your mouth is several degrees hotter than mine
and the heat was delicious
you devoured me with your lips, teeth, and tongue
it was a bruising kiss that i returned with equal intensity
our lips in an act of passion and possession

Woman is a title that comes with too many consequences shoved into the spaces between each letter. I have worn it proudly, not fully understanding the heaviness it carries, or exactly what it means. I still don’t.

Summer camp teaches me how to shave my legs when my mother neglects to. I am eleven, with hair on my skin barely long enough to pull out when my bunkmates coach me on how to erase it. "Boys don't like girls with prickly bodies," my counselor tells me confidently. I soon understand that to be woman means to be bare, stripped, and clean, always. Being woman means catching the changes of your morphing body before anyone else can point them out.

I am raised to keep secrets. We call the parts of ourselves that we aren't supposed to talk about private. I learn to be silent in more ways than one.


Haley is my best friend. Together we uncover the mystery of womanhood untold. She loves a boy two years older than us and gives herself to him in his parked car outside her house during one of our many sleepovers. I listen as she confesses the details to my eager ears. We learn more about *** from each other than we do health class.  The information given out is too much and not enough at the same time. We are taught enough to do it, but not enough to ease our unknowingness.

Condoms are given out for free. Tampons are not.

Virginity was a concept we were told to maintain from early on. At 14 I want to get losing it over with so I do, with a boy two years older, in between his childhood sheets. I am high enough to blur the details, but not high enough to forget it happens.

I learn how to cauterize undesirable memory with substance, the way too many women do.

When a sophomore girl comes to school with a broken face, everyone is quiet. We all know about the fight, the pushing down the stairs, the bruising that swelled violently like her love for him. "I think he's even hotter now," I overhear someone say.

The first boy I ever love treats me like ****. I let him because that's how it works in the movies.

I love a straight girl with curly brown hair and a smile too much like summer. She kisses me and then tells me about whatever boy she is pursuing that week. It confuses me to no end.

Mia meets her first love when we are 17 and gives him all of her too soon. When he dumps her, I come over ready with a box of popsicles in hand.

We play with Polly Pockets well into our teenage years. The dolls live out dreams impossible for us to reach.

I realize vulnerability is not an option, but something we are born wearing.

A friend shows me how to keep my keys peeking through my knuckles at night. I hold them through scared fingers as I navigate the side streets necessary to get home.

Mom buys me glitter covered pepper spray, "because it's cute." I know her unsaid words and what she really means. "There are too many bad people in the world to not be cautious, you can never be too careful."

When a girl I don't know well is attacked in a back alley by strangers, we sit nervously the couch and talk about the terrifying reality, how bad we feel for her, and how awful it must be to go through something like that.

I call my best guy friend immediately after someone I know takes my body without permission. I explain the details to him of what happened, still shaking from the shock of it. I wait for his response, hoping for open arms ready to hold while I shatter. He sighs and says, "you should have been more careful." I don't counter. I shower three times in a row, tuck myself into the same bed where it happened, and pick up the cracked pieces of myself in the morning. I tell no one else after that.

**** is the punch line to too many jokes.
I don’t laugh.

In an anonymous thread, I read as people discuss the topic of ****** assault. My eyes lose count of how many times strangers say, "just because you regret it, doesn't mean it is ****." I have seen doubt ******* too many faces hearing the stories of survivors with dull eyes from telling theirs over and over again to people who will never believe them. Their truth is taken with a shot of uncertainty.
They ask, "Why survivor? Why not victim?"
They say, “It doesn’t **** you, you’re not a survivor.”
I want to answer that survival is a choice made in the aftermath of destruction, that we either chew our way through the broken glass or swallow it whole, letting it break us from the inside out. I want to say survival is not as simple as we didn’t die. Survival is consciously refusing not to.
Instead I say nothing.

I know girls with too many piercings and tattoos because they had run out of room on their small bodies to let out any more anger. I watch darkness fill their skin with its reminder, young girls who know pain all too well.

A man on the street calls out to me. I shake my head quietly because I'm afraid of the bomb my response could set off. I have seen too many ticking men explode for me to want to fight back.

I learn about abortion when I am too young to understand it, too self-centered at the time to try to imagine the fear of unwanted growing inside of her. I have grown to understand the importance of choice.

A guy tells me that if a woman has *** with more than five guys in her lifetime, she's a *****.

Someone I hook up with shares with me about how his friends audio record their girlfriends during ***. He laughs, I shudder.

"Guys don’t like it when.."  is a tip I hear almost daily.  

School dress codes mark my shoulders unholy, my shorts too miniscule. I am sent to the principal's office in 10th grade when I refuse to change into a top that doesn't show my lower back. I ask what my body did to have to learn this kind of shame. I am suspended for the rest of the day.

Beauty pageants teach me that perfect woman is exactly what I am not.

My ex boyfriend calls me a ****.

My other ex boyfriend calls me crazy. I’ve learned that crazy is synonymous with “she had an opinion that did not align with mine.”

In my college lecture we talk about the origins of hysteria, remembering how women in history had their voices twisted into insanity. I think about how often “calm down” is used as a modern-day-tranquilizer.

Us weekly tells me every week, in one too many advertisements, how to lose weight.

My campus paper posts an ad for breast augmentation deals. "Get spring break ready."

The size of my chest is too much a reflection of my brain’s capacity.

Being woman means too much in a language I do not fully understand. It is skin and bones, it is raw and blood, it is a mouth filled with words unsaid, it is fear and worry, it is an unspoken connection between us all, it is 75 cents to a dollar, less for those of color, it is censored body, it is *******, it is being too much to handle, it is being equated with less, it is we are the same but we are not treated so, it is we are human in a world we call man’s, it is we have been struggling under the waves for centuries, it is not drowning, it is still swimming, always

There was nothing I was ever so ashamed of
that I dumped it in a river to drown,
but one time my best friend accidentally tossed my pink fishing pole
into the bayou when a spider dangled from the line.

We were eight, everything was wishy-washy
because she called herself a mulatto like it were an insult
and my older friends kept mentioning that my mom walked herself

to a liquor store very late at night
twelve-packs bruising her German-colored shoulder.
I did not tell them my father had hidden away her car keys.

Girls teased me and I still wanted to kiss their cheeks at goodbyes,
The Little Mermaid featured at our sleepovers
saying, “kiss the girl,” so I did
but we stopped talking when I bought my training bra,
it proved what was in my skirt, my lips could not touch them again.

You cannot kiss a girl if you are a girl,
even if Disney movies say it is okay because Mickie Mouse
has no ***** to be ashamed of though a wife of the opposite ***.

I learned important things until I turned ten
and Hurricane Katrina unraveled the bayou into my house
and I existed in four different classrooms in my fourth grade year
where nobody had enough time
to learn my name, much less the way it is spelled.

Now, in therapy, the certified insists
that I am a girl who kisses other girls because my mother
only put her lips on a bottle.

But maybe I wear striped dresses just because mold grew that
shape in my home on Camellia Street,
mud decorated the fallen refrigerator so it looked like
a cow some punk tipped over.
I just wish the sidewalk I use to rollerblade on hadn’t flooded.

The leeching color from my eyes
My parched mouth puckered
My joints are stiff, stubborn and brittle
Creaking like exhausted floorboards
Wringing my fists, white ands shriveled
Twisting my hands, skinned and raw
I'm ill with desperate thriving
Too weak to carry on, don't have the choice
Veins laden with liqueur, thinning hopes and regret
Pulsing pulsing pulsing
Bones fluttering with birds of bad omen
Scalp rid of hair to make place for the thorny crown of vanquishment
Blood diluted with bitter disappointment,
Sloshing, smearing through my mucked-up system
Aching from the deadly drone of existence
From small victories, large defeats
I'm the mortar, they're the pestle
Clobbering into my hollowed life.

The hammer of that thing
Routine so dull and tedious
Pounding and pounding and pounding
When you can't even scream or weep
Thud thud thud
My temples scream with dank submission
My brain is reeling, hurling from the vertigo of it all.

Morning, noon & night
The dead avenues, the empty buzzing
Beats hammers in my brain
Throb throb throb
I'm quivering with numbness.

I'm mature now, I'm ripe
So ripened and rotten
Adult things, adult preoccupations pulsing around me
It seems like person really only has two choices
Get in on the aimless hustle or be forsaken
I've taken it all up
Rent, coffee, wine, cigarettes and newspaper
Forgotten pills
Unpaid bills
Thump thump thump
Anguish, pain, woe and misery
Turbulence and stress, the banging hammer.

I'm a drunkard, a wanderer
With a beaten, battered suitcase
Days like these, weeks like these, when all the weapons are pointed at me
I'm a ***, an outcast
A pigeon in the pummeling rain
Dribble dribble splash
The ache is a relentless thing.

My job, my rent, my house
My walls limp with memories stuck with rotting glue
Wallpaper torn, curling at the edges
The cold hard floor radiates and screams
The couch, cold & hollow
Incrusted with bits of filthy grime
The dead radiator hisses like an angry snake
The shades down, no sunlight
No life seeping through the venetian blinds
And my clothing sits in the chairs
Like the dead emptied out
The blankets are thin, frayed and tattered
As hope is
The moths, on the other hand, are alive and well
They weave webs of moribund rot
Interlacing me into their strands of decay.

Surrounded by the coldhearted, they snarl
And their laughs abash, dishearten the pure
Bruising me relentlessly
They are so tired, mutilated
either by love or no love
All their bleak and sunken eyes
All their weak and drunken souls
All their meek and shrunken hearts
Vultures with neckties
Weasels in frocks
Collared beasts, that's all they are.

The mournful poet with the shrapnel wound
Was so wrong
I guess he wanted to be lyrical, but his words led astray
Time is not water
It does not flow easy, smooth and transparent
It drags you into dark alleys and batters the hell out of you
Punches you in the ribs, rips your skin,
Jerks you by your hair, stabs you, disfigures you
Leaves you crippled and broken, gasping for air.

Sweating in a rocker
Lanky skeleton hands clasped, praying- for what?
I'm not living, or dying
I'm simply crawling backward
Or no, I'm not crawling, I'm being dragged,
Through nights of lonely perfidy, breathing the beaten dusty air
The dark wind wailing, ebbing through the frail curtains
Laying in bed, too wretched to move
When memories, of heaven and hell,
Droop like broken shades
Across the window of my mind
And ****, I can feel my soul slowly dropping down through the mattress
My stomach is heaving, my teeth clenched and gritted
But not with fear, no, it's too late for dread
And it *****, because we realize we were all so caught up in a life in which we can find no meaning...we end up wrong and graceless and sick
We're born shriveled and alone, we die shriveled and alone
No matter what.

Less than content with
the content you're left with
corrupted
with eroded shoulders
worn down by
the weight of your potential

don't believe in fate
if god decides to show its face
**** on your words
here that bitter regret
bruising

test the limits
of your passion
of your trust
one is daunting
the other claustrophobic
to be caged so tightly by anxiety

tortured by the thought of imperfection

The handcuff bites my wrist
as teeth sink, searing flesh.
A breath, a scent too familiar to forget.
Blind.
Massive palms, razor point
carving canyons down my spine,
blood is the wine.
The burn of beard
feigning consent.
Fistfuls of hair conquering words.
A corpse to rob me of life,
the press of perversity against satin.
Fighting, writhing
satisfaction.
Pain swells in every limb
the wet swell reveal my sin.
Slaps stinging awake
every fiber of clothing still keeping me safe.
The drive of possession
splitting secrets wide,
fingers around throat clenching tight.
Sweat running red,
the rising growls growls resonate in my head.
The raw force bruising
like claiming a slave,
body & mind consuming.
Ferocity leads to frenzy,
my senses rage against me,
The thickness rips,
devours,
conquers my body for paradise.
And I scream in the ecstasy taken.
A clenching incites eruptions,
the pulsing beast flooding.
My purpose awakened.

You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because, in one of the

spun sugar fragile sequences of the events in your life, it works

out. There is a place, somewhere amidst star stuff and cosmic

collisions, where you are not the problem daughter or the

biggest disappointment or the most regretted kiss. There is a

place where you sink into a desk in your eight a.m. class and

a boy with bags under his eyes and a hole-y sweater pulled

over his knuckles says, "hi." There is a place where your father

comes back from the war with sand grit in his eyes, blood

under his fingernails and lets you save him.  There is a place

where you live in India, where you aren't afraid to love, where

everything hurts less, where you stopped punishing yourself for

the faults of your parents. You are a girl. Not a dart board or a guilty

verdict or the final, desperate ****** of a sword through

someone's chest. You are made of the same stuff as Marie

Antoinette and Catherine the Great and Elizabeth, and you

can command the winds too. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight because no one ever asked you about the scars on your

thighs but that doesn't make them nonexistent or unimportant.

You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because you've grown:

stronger in some ways and weaker in others, but you are still

a result of rhapsodies in violet and trees bowed to the sea

and soldiers with wind burn on their cheeks. Tonight, you are

going to wrap your own arms around your own chest and

breathe, swaying silently to no music. You are going to

memorize the sound of silence, and you are going to listen hard

for the even, jagged, pitter patter of your heart. You are going

to thank your body for waging war against itself, you are going

to apologize to your head for bruising your heart. You are going

to feel the roughness of the floor and the vastness of the entire

world and all of the eventualities spread before you. You are

going to remember that this is only one, that atoms and

molecules are flighty, whimsical, prone to selfishness and

longing for the promise of stability. You are going to press your

lips to your own wrists and know, as surely as Anne Boleyn

knew when she walked to the guillotine, that no one can save

you but yourself. You aren't going to **** yourself tonight

because you are not an accident of the multiverse. You are

purposeful and beautiful and young and reckless with your

feelings, but you are not a mistake. Listen to the trembling

of your heartbeat and breathe. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight.

Dear legs...
I'm sorry how i've alwYs complained about you not being long or straight enough.
Thank you for still carrying me even though i've hated you with such a passion.

Dear arms
I also wanna tell you sorry, for punching you when i got mad, and also for complain about you being too floppy.
Thank you for still helping me, do everything and for just being there, life would be a lot harder without you.

Dear ****
I'm sorry for all the times i've said you were ugly, you not being round, small or smooth enough.
Thank you for still going along and let me sit on you when i've been tired.

Dear stomach
Sorry for pinching and hitting you whever i was hungr, and sorry for never liking you beacuse you were floppy but i know it's just skin
And that's how you're suppossed to look.
Thank you for telling me when i'm hungry and keeping in all the food i eat, you work like a machine and that must be hard to do!

dear *****
Sorry for always thinking you were too small, i regret everything i've said you've grown nice and round, i'm sorry for complaining so tou had to hurry so much you got stretchmarks
Thank you, for grabbing so much attention, that id sort of funny.

Dear hips
I'm dorry for punching you and complaining avput you being too wide.
Thank you for giving me the hourglassshape every girl long for.

dear skin
I have so much to be sorry for..
I'm sorry for cutting you, and bruising you and burning you, i' so very sorry i have ruined you this much, i'm sorry for letting my emotions out on you, i have made you scarred and i'm sorry about that. Im sorry for also complaining how you were never clean enough
But thank you! For sticking along and holding my body together you're awesome

Dear face
I'm sorry for never liking you and being sad about my eyes not being deep blue or my nose not perfect
Though i thank you for
Letting my friends know who i am

Dear hair
I'm sorry i put you through a lot of heat and dying and all that but hey you're still on my head i bet i would look weird bald so thank you!

Dear body!
Last but not least
I wanna thank you for being so strong and beautifull i wanna thank you for holding on even though i put you through this much

*dear body... I'm sorry.. Thank you

I’m sick
And I’m tired
I’m eating my words
As they dance on my tongue
Making me squirm as they turn
Oh I’m biting
I’m chewing
Simply swallowing my pride
For I can’t say how I feel
No matter how hard I’ve tried
For they pin me
They ***** me
Puncturing my mind
As I sit here and silence
Muted like a mime
I can’t say it
I fear it
The version that you’ll see
If I emit all of these feelings
My caged memories
For they haunt me
They taunt me
Like a stained porcelain tub
You can’t rid it of residue
No matter how hard you scrub
That’s my mind
They’re my eyes
Tinted a light shade of blue
As eroded as these beaches
I’m drowning from you
Your fingers
They’ve grabbed me
Now bruising my soul
How can one escape from your grasp-
I just long to feel whole
For it was physical
Now emotional
Unsure which one is worse
See these flashbacks you’ve gifted me
Were your most vicious curse


                               Alysia Marie 2018 ©

The dried petals of a once green love
snake through the beige carpet--
along with potato chips,
along with icy *****,
along with grey ash of cheapshit incense,
my empire soles trample in after work.

Susan smiles and tries to reheat the leftovers.
Our bulging bellies match from a marriage of coping strategies,
stretch mark'd and daydreaming of
other seasons; sweat on foreign sheets,
other napes; Mediterranean baby's breath,
other scents; a choice between gardenia and gasoline,
Susan's a liar.
Of deceit--I've grown tired.

Newspaper, newspaper bring me a bullet.
Doorbell, doorbell bring me a blushing nomad in need of bruising.
Ringtone, ringtone bring me DHS and an actual Friday.

Susan tucks me in to the Lullaby of the Infomercial,
her fingernail seeps into my lower lip.
I roll onto my side.

Smiling, laughing, jumping
Beaming with extravagant light
He ran through the meadows hoping
That his father would take him to the wonder Park tonight

But his father couldn’t make it
Since he had a night shift
And little Jimmy couldn’t resist
His innocent tears from dripping

He tried hard to pull his tears in
But they shamelessly slipped
His mother patted his back asking him
To be a strong guy
As according to her and this Utopian world
“Boys don’t cry”

Young Jimmy walked with a sore eye to his house
After getting bullied by Big Barry Fry
His father asked him to man up and stop being a mouse
As according to him and many a folks alike
“Boys don’t cry”

He smashed the ball into the goal
Leading his team to victory
And flung into his father’s arms
Wishing to achieve his sympathy

Adolescent years passed by
Times came which made him want to cry
But he had to hide his tears
As according to this ideal world
“Boys don’t cry”

Time passed
His dreams did shatter ripping him apart
Devastation gripped him breaking his heart
But still he pulled his tears back
He had to try!
Because according to this flawless world
“Boys don’t cry”

The summer of ’59 brought him lady luck
But who knew, innocent Jimmy
Had turned into an evil schmuck
Bruising his wife to death
Gave him eternal peace and rest
Making up for all those moments
Which were supposed to be dry?
As now even according to him
“Boys don’t cry”

~Manu M.

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons

for the Hopeless Stargazer who immortalized his Subject with one hundred and eight sets of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter

for ***** tight clad teenage boys who envied frisky fleas, struggling to make holy ungodly passions with cheap arguments and metaphysical pick up lines

for Disillusioned City Dwellers, who, wandering lonely as clouds, stopped to quietly reflect upon wind-beaten moss-covered crags, and heard God’s whisper thunder from petals and blades of grass

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons

for Bespectacled Slave Drivers who submersed idle minds in anthologies,  forcing them to **** neon yellow on dreams deferred and rivers;  slicing and dicing Grecian urns with red ball point pens; bruising and battering, in blue ball point, roads not taken; scalding supermarkets in California with pyroclastic flows of graphite  

for those pushing to tear apart lines and letters, reconstructing ,deconstructing, agonizing, imaginizing, bullshitting, and brooding on to crisp white sheets in times new roman twelve point font

for the Monsters and Lollipops that exist in the millimeters between a skull and a brain

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons slumbering beneath Restless Leaves Under the Moon