The F Word

I love women who say

They’re not feminists

Because they want men to like them

Women who say

Feminism is bullshit

And then move on

Meek & muted

Have you ever wondered how much

Your sensibilities have been tainted

Dearest

When you grew up reading men

Watching men leading nations

And speaking from high pews

While your mother told you

To be beautiful and unobtrusive

To keep your head down

To have many children

The commandments of submission

All the while girls your age are disfigured with acid in India

But fuck feminism

In an Egyptian market you’re as likely to be sexually harassed

As you are to see spices

But fuck feminism

Countries, rivers, ships and cars

Are all totemically women to men

Playthings

Conquests

A woman dies at the hands of a man every minute in Romania

But fuck feminism

I love women who say they’re not feminists

These frail, contrary creatures

Whose spirits have been bleached of self awareness

Yes girls

They will sell you, your mothers and your daughters for a dime

But fuck feminism

Behind every hard working Japanese man there is a woman

That got fired once she notified her supervisor she was pregnant

Fuck feminism

Please do continue to pull the heart strings

Of every cunt hungry nobody

By swearing off the F word

And promising with religious abandon

To never have a thought that is your own

And might bother a man

Sweetie

I’ll say it with you

Fuck feminism

My birthday is October 3^rd

Autumn has a certain smell

Old age wrapped in mediocre cigars

A hot night on the Aegean shore

Contemplating starlight and rubbish

I used to dream of being

The artist’s apprentice

Muse

Confidant

But after a certain age

I realized that some things are best

Self made

Even if poorly

Yes

Autumn has a certain smell

I float out of my body to look at myself

Sitting on a balcony in Greece

Wearing my melancholic predisposition

And not much else

I’d like to say I’m beautiful

But beauty is something else

Lunar craters

Cosmic voids

The load roar of a dying star

That turns to a hush

That turns to a hum

And I whisper to the night that holds me

In its palm

That autumn has a certain smell

And my husband places his lips on my nape

In agreement.

Testimonial

I remember you were 33 pa

And you cried at Titanic

It was the 2^nd time you saw it

And you’d made me watch it with you

The same man who beat his wife

Until she ran out of the house

Wailing like a heartbroken banshee

You were 33 and handsomely depressed

A sensibility so strange

That 6 year old me could never understand

What it meant to be violent

While swearing you were in love

What it meant to be cruel

While unfolding so softly

What it meant to be smart

But also never sober for more than half a day

You watched Jack Dawson sink so slowly

And cried in silence as if

It was actually you

Did you mind that I saw you

And never forgot

Later on you drove me around

On a pointless search

My dog Max

Had been hit by a car

You’d known he was dead

And yet you kept driving in circles

Because that was love

That was loyalty

I sometimes wonder about

Thermodynamic miracles

About your happiness elsewhere

Without me

But you do not

Despite trudging on morosely

In a cloud of abuse

You said yes to what came

And cried in front of your daughter

And looked for a dog that was dead

And drank time to a halt