Photo by Katjusa Cisar
As much woman as you have ever been, smeared
lipstick, ripped tights – all that glitter. It’s only
been a year. Now, what option did you have when
the whole world saw you break, said you broke
what you had meant to fix? Wasn’t it always your
job, caretaker? You are ignored, now screaming.
Here you become Lilith && Delilah && Lot’s wife.
Here you are all the monsters, you have sheared
the king, rock legend – first man, man’s man.
Here, you are temptress. White boys sit you
beside Yoko, another wife-monster, man-eater.
They say you didn’t write what you lived through.
You become space between legs:
both absence and power.
What right do you have to stick around?
Cunt.
&& now, Madonna. Here you are beneath
Madonna. So low you can see up her skirt. Here
you are drunk & screaming at God - or MTV -
who lets some of us by unscathed, who lets some
of us suffer quiet. You cannot shut up, play nice,
sit down. Stop throwing compacts at Kurt Loader.
Baby doll dress, bright mouth, broke crown &
that nose you got fixed, those bones you trained
to poke through eggshell flesh like fingers,
like needles, like the hammer of a gun.
Caitlyn GD lives, teaches, and rarely calls her parents in south Florida, USA. She is a queer femme witch, originally from Manhattan. Her work is in or coming to Gulf Coast online, Literary Orphans, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Voicemail Poems, among others. She tweets at @Caitlyn_GD.