plantule

someone's ISIS bride needs to read this

My neighbor fights with his beagle who doesn't like the wind in it's face;

against the leash even canine feelings are fustigated, I assume. In the ultra light

all the wounded strip down to their wonted pains.

But what if you have feelings or strangeness.

What if you have a vagina? They began to choose the girls by their hip shape.

Some were shouting, screaming and vomiting.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that things happening somewhere else

as bizarre as flooded avenues/ Chicago murders and blood stained bones

uncovered with flashlights and prayer cloths behind my home,

is not my fight. Then suddenly the skull avails itself, opens it's urticate,

unfurls it's feathers like the preening vertebral of itchy nuns. I stagger home

emoting

the very negro skin I've bleached, and buffed, and exfoliated and tweezed,

contoured and wrinkle filled; who I made false mink eyelashes forever for a 

blinking king until the Everest of

side eyed blackheads burst in the morning like daisies. All

looking for better ways to be wooden sugar slaves repurposed as utilitarian spare furnishings.

Some ISIS bride needs to read this

whisked off with a throbbing uterus and all the beautiful happiness a young girl's

Robert Frost' wasted power can claim ,

may not (as livestock) ever live happily 

Reviews

[Robert Trakofler]

The concept of this is so foreign to me on many levels first I'm the child of a single "slim hipped" mother second this low quality broodmare mother was in fact... god and quite capable! so the concept of gender inequality is not only foreign but repulsive to me. Now back to the actual world the scales of measurement hips notwithstanding in society regarding the fairer sex are still in many ways skewed toward the looks of the person and rarely the person herself this is measured by both sexes in this regard wich just annoys the hell out of me. I could give and this is me mind you a rats a*s what a person looks like but I do care what a person is made of and the concept of being with a person purely for the look of them is so ridiculous and equally to me the concept of a person that lives only by the appearance equally absurd and quite sad. even here in this society we are in we have a lot to learn but in other countries its much much worse. You always make me think Dana

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Mmmmm. Indeed many who have wished to or become brides of ISIS were seeking something they were told was sweet only to find bitter aftertastes. Some were forcibly subdued and used as sex slaves. A story told in the shadow of many 'wars' and even in peacetime by traffickers who have little regard for anyone. The trouble I guess for society is the ones who swallowed the propaganda and who serve ISIS and their like with a meek humility?

[Einstein Noodle]

great title h d ... had to look it up ... my word for the day ;) wow! powerful write as always .. breath sucked out of me .. blood running down to numb me legs ... sheesh! i absolutely feel the pull ... the irony of "its not my fight..." ..what a turn my friend ..brings it to me as i read .. i am a retired Critical Care RN and in our PICU we had a Physician from the middle East ... one of our flight nurses told me that he made just such a comment to her about her hips and she should be having children .. we shared a mild shock over that .. a certain embarrassment and the knowing he should be called up short for such a thing .. but ... we thought .. he's just being ... him ..its a culture .. a believe .. its not our fight.... :{
it is our fight tho isn't it .. at every turn no matter how graphic it may or may not be .. sex slavery in speech is the generating plantule of ISIS rape and degradation of human beings .. i think your poem is sobering, powerful, vivid and the sarcastic irony is strong, poignant in this ... and on a bigger screen women continue to suffer objectification .. size shape and color ... at work, play .. in the mirror at home in private moments ... :((( i know i tell you every time ... you are very talented .. your poetry needs a broader exposure says i ... i will not be surprised when you get it ;) love on ya rushin! peace and joy ..thanks so much for sharing right here ... on Writers' Cafe' your mighty fine poetry

[h d e rushin]

thanks brother...and you're so right. "Masculinity obscures the staunch, enduring flesh". I was watching some old "Petticoat Junction" reruns the other night and there was this huge hesitation to accept as normal the character of Billy Joe (Linda Henning who was trying to play a feminine character with a masculine heart. "Objectification" is how we make normal mores vertical. At my class reunion only a fourth of the women even bothered to show up. The battle, the conflict, the tumult is that being objectified is what society expects of/for women and one certainly doesn't have to be from a Muslim country for this to be true. They have taken most of the mirrors out of the dressing room at Layne Bryant. Victoria Secret stopped selling clothes larger than size 12. And you 'just cant' have a woman's apparel store called "Big and Tall". Thanks for your kind words my friend, much appreciated....dana

[Einstein Noodle]

:) ......................

[jacob erin-cilberto]

oh my...the perspective here is so spot on...putting ourselves in their shoes...in some cultures surely being a woman is being a slave...manipulated, chained to a life she didn't choose...we feel it isn't our fight until we realize it is everyone's fight, including ours.
we need to free them because they are definitely not livestock....Frost, to me, often writes in delusion...the world being overly sweet....and all that beautiful nature...because there are those who never have the chance to appreciate it. No chance at all.
j.

[h d e rushin]

so true brother...but they "want" for this life then regret what this life has brought. thanks for your great insight my friend...dana