“Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls with Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair” by Jeanann Verlee

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word4 Comments

When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you gave him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in a bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her, apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red.

When your mother hits you, do not strike back.

“Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls with Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair” by Jeanann Verlee, published at PANK Magazine

Copyright © Jeanann Verlee

Jeanann Verlee is an author, performance poet, editor, activist, and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and winks at boys. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in a variety of journals, including The New York Quarterly, FRiGG, PANK, decomP, Danse Macabre, and The Legendary, among others. Her poems have also been included in various anthologies such as “Not A Muse: The Inner Lives of Women” and “His Rib: Poems Stories and Essays by Her.” Verlee’s first full-length book of poems, Racing Hummingbirds (Write Bloody Publishing, 2010), earned the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Poetry.

“What’s Not Here” by Rumi

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I start out on this road,
call it love or emptiness,
I only know what’s not here.

Resentment seeds, backscratching greed,
worrying about outcome, fear of people.

When a bird gets free,
it does not go for remnants
left on the bottom of the cage.

Close by, I’m rain.  Far off,
a cloud of fire.   I seem restless,
but I am deeply at ease.

Branches tremble.  The roots are still.
I am a universe in a handful of dirt,
whole when totally demolished.

Talk about choices does not apply to me.
While intelligence considers options,
I am somewhere lost in the wind.

“What’s Not Here” by Rumi (translation by Coleman Barks), A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks

“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song …

On By Christina's WordsIn Art, Quote
Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse.
Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse. 1891. Oil on canvas. Via Wiki Commons.

“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.”

– Franz Kakfa, The Silence of the Sirens

* Oops! Apologies to email subscribers who received two extra posts yesterday due to admin scheduling error (fat thumb, small iPhone buttons). -Christy

“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

On By Christina's WordsIn Music5 Comments

*

So remember when we were driving driving in your car
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

– “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, from Tracy Chapman

* Oops! Apologies to email subscribers who received two extra posts due to admin scheduling error (fat thumb, small iPhone buttons). -Christy

“The Type” by Sarah Key

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word2 Comments

The Type

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else. -Richard Siken

If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
you can let them look at you. But do not mistake eyes for hands.

Or windows.
Or mirrors.

Let them see what a woman looks like.
They may not have ever seen one before.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
you can let them touch you.

Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.
Sometimes it is a bottle. A door. A sandwich. A Pulitzer. Another woman.

But their hands found you first. Do not mistake yourself for a guardian.
Or a muse. Or a promise. Or a victim. Or a snack.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
you can let them hold you.

All day they practice keeping their bodies upright–
even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural, still strains the muscles,

holds firm the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learn
what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,

admit they do not have the answers
they thought they would have by now;

some men will want to hold you like The Answer.
You are not The Answer.

You are not the problem. You are not the poem
or the punchline or the riddle or the joke.

Woman. If you grow up the type men want to love,
You can let them love you.

Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean

after years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands.
It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.

Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman
men will hurt. If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.

It is hard to stop loving the ocean. Even after it has left you gasping, salty.
Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call

mistakes when you tuck them in at night. And know this:
Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.

Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.

You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You were born to build.

“The Type” by Sarah Key, published in Alright and on the Huffington Post.

* Sarah mentions in her performance that this poem is inspired by a line from “Detail of the Woods” by Richard Siken (shared on Words for the Year yesterday): “…Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else.”