1. |
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My greatest aspiration when I was five
was to grow up and be a dog.
Your faithfulest companion.
I walked everywhere on all fours,
no matter the location.
Ballet practice, kindergarten, grocery stores,
Sunday school, the pumpkin patch, Goodwill.
I made my parents call me
Lady, Wishbone, Lassie, Porkchop.
The life of a dog is easy, after all, so why not?
I was nineteen the first time I was ever called
a bitch.
It was said to me at 2am over Facebook messenger
when I told a guy that I did not return
his desperate sentiment.
His vocabulary was the cliché rhetoric
of those who believe in the mythical friend zone:
How dare you not like me back?
You are a tease.
You are a lead on.
You are a bitch.
But all I could hear was:
You are a dog.
You are a very bad dog.
You have forgotten your training.
Learn to take commands.
Stay. Obey. Lay yourself down.
Do whatever it is that I say.
Now you think that all I should be capable of
is to be told when to roll over?
You think you can command me to come?
Tell me that I’m your “good girl.”
Look, you Robin Thicke glorifier,
let me make this crystal clear:
I would rather be a bitch
than your lovesick puppy.
I am a Greyhound outrunning
every man who has ever made me feel small.
I am a Saint Bernard barreling
across the frozen tundra of men’s teeth.
I am a Black Lab guiding
us towards a safer world for femmes.
I am a Blue Heeler pissing
inside of your favorite fedora.
I am a Dalmatian bearing
my fangs at unwanted creeps in my life.
I am a Doberman mauling
anyone who lays a nonconsensual finger on me or my friends.
I am a Chihuahua readying
to rip out your throat.
I am a Pit bull receiving
stereotyped judgment when all I want to do is shake.
I am a Great Dane,
giant but gentle.
I am a Yorkie,
little but fierce.
I am a Corgi frolicking
through life in the pursuit of happiness.
I am a German Shepherd,
loyal to a fault.
I was wrong when I was five.
A dog’s life is not easy,
yet I know a destiny when I see one.
I know what my life has and will become,
and you cannot put me to sleep
just because I do not please.
Like a dog,
once I am kicked,
I do not forget.
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2. |
Regaining My Voice
02:05
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I was taught at a young age
that my opinion
would never be important
so long as men occupied my space.
I never had a say in my own household,
testosterone a force I could never win against.
My father - more often than not -
made me cry on the way to school
with chastising remarks,
and my brother would sneak out at night
to teepee houses and underage drink,
yet I was the black sheep of the family,
always met with disapproving eyes
for being too weird, for being too loud, for being too me.
So I learned to hold my breath.
I discovered that “I don’t know”s and static silence
would not condemn me.
I choked down anger, threw away sadness,
shook off irritability
in the presence of others,
and suddenly
everyone wanted a piece of me.
People found me more interesting
when my mouth stopped moving.
I became pleasantry.
Who doesn’t like a nice, temperate, quiet thing?
So when you ask me
where my voice has gone
or why my birchwood tongue
has forgotten gravity,
please understand
I am trying to unlearn
the only way I’ve ever known how to survive.
It has been eons since my
emotions last cracked the surface.
Not the pretty ones -
the guttural, the damned, the raw,
the feelings I believed best left
buried deep in my gut, in my throat, but
I will dig them out of my anatomy
with trowel and scythe.
I will cleave myself open
until every emotion is on beautiful display.
I will come to you,
gaping and unhidden,
just as I have always dreamed.
It may not look like I am trying most days,
but believe me, I am cracking bones
with every aching thought.
Slowly I will peel away the muscles and skin,
until we find enlightenment.
I will unlearn the silence for you,
just give me time
to remember how sweet
sound can taste.
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3. |
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Thumbtacks. Baby teeth.
Lady bugs. Cherry tomatoes.
Retrieved bobby pins.
My hedgehog’s tolerance towards humans.
A squeezed hand in passing.
Chihuahua puppies. Backs of earrings.
A hummed tune in an empty kitchen.
Toothbrush bristles.
My boyfriend’s voice when he cries.
A held elevator. A shared sandwich.
Moss. Tear drops.
The earth.
The smell of fresh pine.
Sleeping in. Forehead kisses.
Root beer floats. Cartwheels. Goosebumps.
My father’s understanding of mental illness.
My deceased mother’s turtle necklace.
Sitting graveside deep in conversation with a ghost.
Knowing I have her hands, her eyes.
The way my smile keeps
some small part of her alive.
The last heaves of sobbing.
Wishbones.
Forget-me-nots.
Time.
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4. |
Once I Loved A Pirate
02:38
|
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I am seventeen years old
and in love with my best friend.
This girl in the grade below mine
who is obsessed with pirates,
who will running-tackle me between classes,
who has a laugh that can
encompass a high school alcove,
drown my father's minivan,
embrace every limb of me.
When we sit side-by-side at play rehearsals
I always rest my hand close to hers,
hoping one day she will wrap
her tiny fingers ‘round my desperate ones.
She never does.
I never ask her to,
and suddenly I am twenty
and kissing college girls is not a problem,
though they will only kiss me when I am drunk
and only when they too are drunk.
After the meeting of our lips
they always pull away laughing
like my mouth is their favorite joke,
like kissing me is such a silly game we play.
Now I am twenty-nine,
and I do not attend pride parades.
Do not read at queer open mics.
I know how it looks - to be the girl
who’s only ever dated men,
who’s loved women silently her whole life,
who wants to someday marry her boyfriend.
Doesn't matter
how I scribbled love poems for Lindsey and Sarah
in the margins of my pre-calc notes.
How I never wanted
Robyn’s mouth to leave mine.
Doesn't matter
that I have known who I am, what I am
since I was twelve,
a Catholic upbringing so heavy on my shoulders.
Doesn't matter.
My voice has never felt like it mattered in this space.
I tell myself this is fine -
most days I believe it.
I am a PSA for bi erasure.
Standing right in front of you, but
not proof enough, not yell enough.
Forgot to open my mouth again, after all,
I am so good at erasing my own voice.
But here,
here is the proof:
In the laughter of each college girl,
I always pretended that I was kissing
her - the pirate with the boisterous laugh,
and it never worked.
The laughter of these girls
was always too drunken, too high pitched,
not loud enough, not shameless enough,
not beautiful,
never as beautiful
as hers.
|
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5. |
Anxiety: A Horror Story
03:07
|
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I tac a sheet of loose leaf
graph paper on top
the corkboard in my bedroom.
It reads ‘GOALS OF 2018’,
and I know that all my aspirations
will be achieved,
like I read the future
from the murky tea leaves
at the bottom of my mug.
It is not because
“THIS IS MY YEAR”
or that I am a self-motivated person.
It is because there is a list.
I put pen to paper,
make a to do list for the day,
a to do list for the week,
the month, the summer, the year,
and the full moon
blooms in the violet sky
as I turn werewolf,
hungry for the blood of productivity,
a beast who cannot rest
until she’s dealt
with all the unfinished business
left in her life,
and my unfinished business
is my entire life.
There is nothing so gratifying
as my pen rending an X
at the completion of each task.
The monster in my gut
howls with delight;
another victim for the slaughter.
I feed off of lists.
It reads like a horror movie.
The monster in me
goes to Jiffy Lube and feeds,
sweeps the house and feeds,
takes her birth control and feeds,
makes her bed with blood
dripping down her feral face.
With a list
I werewolf myself through each day,
going from task to task to task to task
never pausing to take a breath,
never knowing how to relax,
always taut with fear that
the pack might function fine without me.
These lists grow
faster than I dare dream,
each one a feral beast of my own creation.
Don’t I already know the ending to this film?
The twist occurs:
how the lists are
the real monsters of this movie,
these lists who I thought
were on my side.
My lists maul me,
suck the marrow from my bones.
Anxiety is the monster
from which I can never escape,
always keeping me on the edge of my seat.
To be so dependent
on a thing as simple as list-making
turns me human,
hoping for the meat of success.
Nothing else matters.
I have already been bitten
by the virus of poor mental health.
I can never stop, anxiety’s infection
making me do every single task.
Can’t go out with friends, unless it’s on the list.
Can’t call my dentist back, unless it’s on the list.
Can’t masturbate, unless it’s on the list.
Can’t do anything I want to do
unless I put it on a fucking list.
What a horrifying reveal.
To find there is no cure.
That no hero is bursting through the door to save me,
that the monster is just playing with its food.
I pull out the pen, my inciting incident.
I write “To Do List For The Week” on paper,
and for a moment I feel so comforted,
like seeing my life laid out before me
won’t kill me in the end.
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6. |
Man On A Bicycle
01:56
|
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Hello! It is I! Your friendly neighborhood
man riding a bicycle!
I know what I’m doing! I’m clearly in control!
Because, after all, I am a Man! On a bicycle!
And as a man on a bicycle, I feel it is my duty
to yell at you, girl walking two dogs,
for staring at your phone while you cross the street!
The nerve of it all!
You are endangering yourself! And those dogs!
Clearly, as a woman and a millennial,
you do not know what you are doing!
You are not in control of your life!
Unlike me! A Man! On a bicycle!
This is why I felt the urge to yell,
“Don’t look at your phone!
What are you doing!?”
I am so good at using words - clearly!!
And yes, I did notice that it was
eleven o’clock at night
and there were zero cars on the road
when you clearly looked both ways
before crossing the street,
and hey, maybe you just wanted to
enjoy some Pokemon Go at the end of your week…
But no! As a Man! On a bicycle!
Your safety must come first!
And I must use my words to tell you so!
Clearly you do not know the first thing about safety!
You are not wearing a helmet! Like me!
You are not sporting a flashing light in the dark! Like me!
You are not a man! Like me!
So it is my duty to impose,
because if I do not impose then how will you ever learn?
If I do not scream at you
(Me! A strange Man! In the dark! On a bicycle!),
how are you ever going to survive?
Can’t you see I’m only doing this to help you?!
So be thankful that I yelled at you!
Learn your lesson, ya stupid lady!
Learn to take control!
Aren’t you so glad that I, a Man! On a bicycle!,
was here to tell you what to do?
What would you ever do without me?
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7. |
||||
most days i try to find the perfect metaphor
to describe my body like
it is that simple
paint it in poetic subtext
so it must be true
all these words claiming my body is
a china plate is
a dumbbell is
a sinking ship is
a meteor shower is
a wishing well but
last i checked
my body is
a body
all bone rubble and crying muscles
the arteries routing through flesh
dotted freckles kissing wrists and hips
my body is just as complex as the body
it shares a bed with the body it speaks to
in the office the body it does not
smile at on the street the
body it downs a beer with at day’s end
there is nothing and everything poetic
about trying to survive
in these bodies we do not understand
most days my body is a body
but therein lies the problem
some days my body wishes
it could just be
anything else
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8. |
||||
I.
you sucker punched caverns
inching colossal
purple trail blazers
all monumental and zombie mouthed
violent violet bursts
firecrackling sainthood
you unrelenting earthquake
you ring around the rosies
bubonic plague never looked so good
II.
insomnia made bedfellow of me
at too young an age
the moon kissed supple skin
leaving these thick prints
always constant
never pretty
no matter how i muse them
to help on sleepless nights
my mother kissed each eyelid
gifted me a double prayer
as the hands reached two in the morn
as her hands massaged through my hair
i softly found sleep
in the dead of night
III.
the purple darkened with age
but not for lack of sleep
but for fear of it
before we buried my mother
i kissed her eyelids
played mirror
to her and the moon all at once
i did not sleep for years
she only visited in my nightmares
only came back to life as a drone
or a monster or not mother
or everything wrong stuffed into a corpse
or a lie
the circles under my preteen eyes
harden as the hour hand finds 4am
deepen as my bed goes unslept
widen as the moon kisses me and
kisses me and kisses me and kisses me
just like she used to kiss me
IV.
i really did want to write
an ode to these rings under my eyes
to love all of the unloveable parts of me
but isn't it so like me
to strike out with such good intentions
only to decide that they are not worth the effort
only to make it all about my mother
but isn't every poem i write about my mother
isn't she the echo in all my verses
has she not kissed each syllable
isn't she my mouth and voice
don’t i already spend every day
sounding like a ghost
or a prayer
V.
i sleep soundly now
wake up feeling as big as the moon
pretend she doesn’t still frequent my nightmares
smear makeup under my eyes
cover up the unlovable parts of me
you wouldn’t even know of the lilac bruises
that will never fade
shrouded and feared and mourned like
a mother’s kiss
|
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9. |
I Love You...Nicorns
03:41
|
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I love sunflower metaphors.
I love impersonating Kristin Chenoweth in the solidarity of my Subaru.
I love watching magic tricks while drunk.
I love everything about New Zealand - except for the price of the food.
I love the Oregon coast on overcast afternoons.
I love that I will never have to fill out another
fucking FAFSA application for as long as I goddamn live.
I love argyle on men.
I love waistcoats on women.
I love Miyazaki heroines.
I love shoving entire hamburgers into my face.
I love Jim Henson and everything that he did.
I love John Oliver and everything that he’s doing.
I love Sophie Turner, Samira Wiley, and Emma Stone unapologetically.
I love the sight of the Portland cityscape as I drive
across the Hawthorne bridge at dusk.
I love philosophizing Muppets and Jurassic Park.
I love creme brulee flavored coffee creamer.
I love clawfooted bathtubs.
I love tattoos that tell stories.
I love Christmas time and how romantic it makes me feel.
And
I love... puppies. Okay, wait, wait, I do.
I love dogs dogs dogs so incredibly much.
I love videos of baby sloths squeaking and porcupines eating pumpkins.
I love red pandas being spooked and teacup pigs
leaping into oceans of oatmeal.
I love that little loris clutching that umbrella. It is so momentous in my life.
And
I love hands in my hair.
I love made up words to make me smile.
I love bedtime stories about swans or ballroom dancing
or Sonic the Hedgehog.
I love the gravitational pull of a palm to another.
I love this sense of certainty.
And.
And.
I love you … nicorns.
I love you … letide festivities.
I love you … wes, as in sheep.
I love you … of O for bringing my parents together.
I love you … FO movies but only if Will Smith is present.
I love you … niversity football. (That one’s not even true.)
I love you … gandan men.
I love you … goslavian women.
I love you … l Brynner.
I love you … -Gi-Oh playing card Dark Magician Girl.
I love you … ’re a Good Man Charlie Brown the musical.
I love you … Were Cool” my second favorite song
by The Mountain Goats.
I love. I love.
I love endlessly.
I say “I love” countless times throughout each day.
I say it of animals, fandoms, friends,
food, weather, technology, dogs especially.
I say “I love” so often
that it might as well have lost all meaning,
so why are the words suddenly
clawing their way back down my throat?
Maybe because it’s taken
twenty-four years to rip the seams.
A quarter of my life of mediocre dates,
detached partners, half-hearted lovers.
Two and a half decades
of unreturned sunflower metaphors.
Now context is key,
but you cannot deny how
there is something so romantic
about this absurd amount of bravery,
and you can't help but quiver in wonder:
"Well, what if it’s all a smoke screen?"
"What if we're sitting on a loaded gun?"
“What if this avalanche destroys?”
"What if you … don't say it back?"
You…
I love…
so much so often,
but you
are at the top
of every single one of my lists.
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10. |
Mother's Day Mantra
03:20
|
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It is mother’s day
again,
and I am thinking of her
again.
Not that there is ever a day
I don’t think about my mom.
I write on Facebook:
“If Mother’s Day is hard for you,
you’re not alone.
Take care of yourself today.”
It is my mantra when
this holiday rolls around,
and my cousin responds:
“Go do something that she would want to do.”
So.
I take myself to Safeway,
buy peaches and butter,
return home to bake a cobbler.
This is not because my mother loved to bake
(which she didn’t)
or that she was incredible in the kitchen
(cause she definitely was not),
but I know that my mom …
… would have eaten the shit
out of a peach cobbler.
She had a love of food
that went unrivaled,
as was her love of everything in life.
What’s more,
I bake this cobbler knowing that
she would be proud of me
for making something out of nothing.
I have written dozens of poems
about my mom.
The good ones only
started showing up in the last five years.
My poems about her are always
laced with sadness,
heavy with mourning.
I think to myself
how this is a sin,
because my mother
was the happiest person.
Always a huge grin on her face;
a laugh that could rival a firework display.
She was the person at the party
everyone wanted to talk to;
the English teacher in all those
cliche inspirational films.
She loved my dad relentless
and would have left him
in a heartbeat for Tom Hanks.
She enjoyed Shakespeare,
Maya Angelou, John Irving,
and thought that Shrek was
the funniest film she had ever seen.
She was the sun, or rather, a galaxy,
and since her death
I am still trying to navigate my way back
to her solar system.
It is difficult to mourn someone
who was buried
over half a lifetime ago.
So easy to put a parent on a pedestal
when you never knew them as an adult.
I mourn fragments of a human,
all the what ifs, all the it could have beens.
I visit my mother’s grave today
for the first time in a year.
I sit on the ground and tell her
of my boyfriend, of poetry, of dogs.
Giving up on the concept of god means
giving up on the concept of life after death,
but damn, it still feels so nice to talk.
I leave her grave
and do not cry,
and I wonder if this
is what healing feels like.
To finally tuck her memory
where it does not hurt.
To not spend the day
in bleak mourning.
I know it’s what she’d want.
When I do not cry
I do not think
“bad” daughter,
“not sad enough” daughter,
I just think “daughter.”
So.
I watch a Tom Hanks movie.
I kiss a dog and smile.
I bake the shit out of a peach cobbler,
the aroma filling my house
with the sweetest scent,
something almost resembling her.
|
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11. |
||||
The sky apologizes to Monica Lewinsky
for not catching her fast enough;
for not forming a comfort cloud cushion
for her to land upon.
Left her shrieking.
Left her wailing.
Left her plummeting
and plummeting
and plummeting.
I am ten years old
in Jenna Saadeh's basement
tucked into sleeping bag,
pressed between two giggling bodies,
eyes glued to television
where Saturday Night Live
parades around a twenty-two year old girl
in a spotlight
she did not wish conjured,
laughter littering the backdrop.
Twenty years later,
Monica Lewinsky’s name is still the butt of the joke.
While Bill Clinton swaggers
into camera's view,
is applauded just for being there,
for having some good sense about him.
What a supportive husband.
What a good man.
The ocean apologizes to Monica Lewinsky
for mounting a living funeral
for yet another young woman
tricked into trusting a trickster,
into falling for the wolf,
all snarl and chew.
What a reminder.
That a man can thirst for infidelity,
crave bread from other tables,
hunger his family away
and still be welcomed by the world
with loving arms.
All while the world calls his wife
crazy shrew.
All while calling his ex-intern
deserved slut.
… But ….
Did you know Monica Lewinsky
is now an advisor
for an anti-bullying organization?
Has a masters in social psychology?
Speaks out against cyberbullying?
Speaks out about her PTSD?
Speaks out of how, though consensual,
there is something to be said of
a man twenty-seven years her senior
who was also the fucking president
making a move on his employee
and how that is the utmost definition of
“abuse of power.”
Did you know
that Monica Lewinsky could not
give a fuck about what you think of her?
In a 2004 interview she stated,
“I was the buffet,
and he just couldn't resist the dessert.”
I think what she also meant was:
Women are nothing if not
the sky,
the oceans,
the mountains.
Something so magnificent
men are desperate to claim.
Unconquerable miracles
men must plant a flagpole in.
Give us new names.
Say they are the first to touch our soil.
Say it’s not their fault
as they slowly ruin us,
raking their hands over
every inch of our landscapes.
The earth apologizes to Monica Lewinsky.
The earth apologizes to Anita Hill.
To Ashley Judd. To Zoe Quinn. To Janet Jackson.
To Jessica Stoyadinovic.
To Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
To every woman made mockery.
To every girl who did not crumble
as the world crafted her into
a lie,
a threat,
a punchline.
|
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12. |
||||
I resisted the eyeliner for so long.
It always seemed too ... bold?
Too loudmouth?
Too slammed door?
Too forest fire?
Too look at me?
Mascara was my first vanity,
made my face into a thousand butterfly kisses.
Next, the lipstick, a crimson dictionary.
Then came the blush - a fluster.
Then came the cover up - a flawless fib.
I made myself into the women
I always saw in the movies;
so put together, so mature.
My parents let me know
before I was even allowed to wear makeup
that too much of it made you
unsavory, or desperate, or both.
Just like the women
who cut off all of their hair,
covered themselves in tattoos,
wore clothes to show off their sun-kissed skin.
I was taught to not be like them.
But one day
the pencil found its way
into my curious palm.
The first time I applied eyeliner,
I swear, a hallelujah chorus burst
through my bathroom ceiling.
A volcano erupted inside my lungs.
Engulfed in flames,
I grasped this new magic to my chest, like
an ex-Catholic once grasped the Bible.
Now instead of the Bible,
I swear my life on NYX’s Epic Eyeliner,
and the truth of it is how
my eyes have always been
the loudest thing about me.
Open the book of me
and see every drunk man in a bar
or every drunk boy at a house party
who thought the following a compliment:
“Has anyone ever told you
how big your eyes are?”
What am I even supposed to say to that?
“Congratulations, motherfucker!
You’re the first person ever
to notice that my eyes are scary big!”
The skill of pointing out the obvious
has never much impressed me.
My body is more than a conversation starter;
it is its own station, its own cathedral.
I built it brick-by-brick with these two good hands.
Muddied my skin laying down the foundation,
muscled the weight of becoming,
guarded the finale from violators with a shotgun -
I dare you to tempt me to use it,
and eyeliner is nothing if not
another brick to sanction this home.
Just like
all the hair I chop,
all the tattoos I gather,
all the skin I expose.
My eyeliner turns me into
something solid,
something so much myself.
If my eyes are the loudest thing about me,
then turn the volume up,
let my eyes grown even larger,
let them bloom to the size of skyscrapers.
Nowadays I refuse to go out into the world
without wings,
without daggers.
Bleed yourself senseless
if your gaze lingers too long.
Look at how sharp
these eyes sculpt themselves.
A pinprick sucker punch.
A refusal to apologize for all of this femme.
Look at how proud,
look at how loudmouth,
look at how epic
I have become.
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Julia Gaskill Portland, Oregon
Julia Gaskill (she/her) is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured on FreezeRay Poetry, Ink&Nebula, SlamFind, Knight's Library Magazine, Write About Now, and more. Julia is the author of four chapbooks, has competed nationally with her poems, runs the mic Slamlandia, and co-founded the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in 2019. ... more
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