women's history month collection
this collection was curated for women. it is a collection of poems by notable women writers who exemplified what it means to be woman.
reyna biddy
a message to women
You deserve better than to be called pretty
You deserve better than to get upset and go online to act petty
You deserve better than to be on hold
You deserve better than to hold onto someone who's already let go
You deserve better than to be held in convenience
You deserve better than to keep your relationship lowkey because
Someone might see it
And someone might ask questions
And someone might wonder
Why someone like you would rather hang around a boy
Who wont commit when someone like them is ready to love you
Is ready to learn you
Ready to show you
Who you are
Paint you a picture of you through his eyes and convince you that you are indeed art
Show you the way he's mesmerized the way your broken heart still beats
The way it flutters when whole eyes and yours meet
The way it silences to express its beat
Show you how much he realizes you need healing from this hurting
I know you
I know something about what you've been through
I know some days feel like heavy weights and hearts with protection
That you've failed to break through and i know what it's like to put heart break on hold
For the love of your life who forgot relationships take two
I know he forgot to say I love you too
I know he forgot to stay faithful
I know you forgot about the time you promised yourself
You'd do better but every time you try to leave something keeps pulling you back
Telling you this is the best you'll ever have in life
So you stay the night
Every night he misses you after remembering your head and how good it works
And how good it feels to know no matter how bad it gets
You'll always come back
I know you
And he does too
We know the way your stomach drops at the thought of him loving someone better
So he knows you wont search for better
And I know you deserve better
I know you deserve better than to have your spirit bruised
I know you deserve someone who empowers you
I know just how beautiful you could be if only you could see your own value
I know you
You're a collection of paradox's
You're a compilation of food for thought
You're a woman before all things
You're more a lover than a fighter after all it seems
You're special
Listen to me
You're special
And I know you know you deserve
Way better than to settle
​
a message from women
Do you know what it's like to be left alone in love
Do you know what it's like to feel stuck in love
Do you know what it's like to be too depressed
Do you know what it's like to have to beg for forever from a person who neglects your history
Do you know what it's like to lose everything
Do you know what it's like to feel abandoned
Do you know what it's like to wait
Do you know that I will never be too near or too far away
Honestly, I'm still waiting for closure
I still question what this is or what this was because I can't help but hope our feelings were mutual
Do you know how it feels to constantly chase a feeling you're addicted to
Do you know I got the Jones for you and an appetite and a sweet tooth
Do you know I prayed for you from night till day
Regardless of my better judgement or dismay
Time after time after promises that never seemed impossible or too good to be true
Do you know what it's like to try convincing yourself that this was the truth
Like I was the woman created for you
Do you know how much I've craved you
I've searched for you everywhere in people, in prayer, in Psalm, in different lovers, in God
And God I wish you really knew that I'd love you till death or that I'd kill for you or that I feel you, like, so deep, like, deeper than anyone ever will
Do you know what it's like to feel dead inside and see you so alive still
​
But these days I feel alive
I've been able to realize you just weren't meant for me
These days I don't cry over spilled milk or lost love or things I have no control of
These days I just love myself more
I just know there's a happily ever after
These days I just don't see it with you
Nothing personal, I think I just fell too quick for your potential
I just wanted you to be the one
I just thought we made sense but now I love myself enough to know better
​
jackie sabbagh
having a great time being transgender in america lately
It is day infinity
of everyone wanting me dead. People are having fun
bringing lemon squares and automatic artillery to the anti-trans community
meetings.
Divorced legislators harangue
about pedophile cults and surgeried infants and what ever happened to
forever ago.
I am more beautiful than you and I would like to be loved.
I am getting concerned
about the monomaniacs who make their entire lives about deadnaming and
transvestigations:
obviously it’s working but aren’t you exhausted, don’t you remember
when someone loved you without knowing what you were?
I am eating shortbread on a patio table overlooking the enormous green
ocean.
Somewhere an octopus is being eaten by an octopus and not panicking.
Black dress to the floor, red acrylic nails, silver teardrop earrings, waterproof
mascara.
I am excited to do this for the rest of my life and be terrified.
I hear a noise behind me and I don’t turn around.
warsan shire
the house
i
Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust,
bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy.
Sometimes the men - they come with keys,
and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers.
ii
Nin soo joog laga waayo, soo jiifso aa laga helaa,
I said Stop, I said No and he did not listen.
iii
Perhaps she has a plan, perhaps she takes him back to hers
only for him to wake up hours later in a bathtub full of ice,
with a dry mouth, looking down at his new, neat procedure.
iv
I point to my body and say Oh this old thing? No, I just slipped it on.
v
Are you going to eat that? I say to my mother, pointing to my father who is lying on the dining room table, his mouth stuffed with a red apple.
vi
The bigger my body is, the more locked rooms there are, the more men come
with keys. Anwar didn’t push it all the way in, I still think about what he could
have opened up inside of me. Basil came and hesitated at the door for three
years. Johnny with the blue eyes came with a bag of tools he had used on
other women: one hairpin, a bottle of bleach, a switchblade and a jar of Vaseline.
Yusuf called out God’s name through the keyhole and no one answered. Some
begged, some climbed the side of my body looking for a window, some said they were on their way and did not come.
vii
Show us on the doll where you were touched, they said.
I said I don’t look like a doll, I look like a house.
They said Show us on the house.
Like this: two fingers in the jam jar
Like this: an elbow in the bathwater
Like this: a hand in the drawer.
viii
I should tell you about my first love who found a trapdoor under my left breast
nine years ago, fell in and hasn’t been seen since. Every
now and then I feel something crawling up my thigh. He should make himself
known, I’d probably let him out. I hope he hasn’t
bumped in to the others, the missing boys from small towns, with pleasant
mothers, who did bad things and got lost in the maze of
my hair. I treat them well enough, a slice of bread, if they’re lucky a piece of fruit.
Except for Johnny with the blue eyes, who picked my locks and crawled in. Silly boy, chained to the basement of my fears, I play music to drown him out.
ix
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
No one.
x
At parties I point to my body and say This is where love comes to die. Welcome, come in, make yourself at home. Everyone laughs, they think I’m joking.
nakayla monét
i'm just a mom
i’m just a mom
i’m just a mom;
born with a womb,
for rainclouds and doom,
masked as gold and garden blooms.
i’m just a mom;
i start at 5am, and continue
past high noon.
monotonous routines
overpowering me
revolving around the two of you—
365 rotations in a single hour,
the sun, no match to
a mother’s power.
i’m just a mom;
i chose motherhood,
i plucked her like strawberries
in the springtime;
i didn’t know I’d be
eating strawberries forever.
i’m just a mom;
i am cow and beef,
bottle and feed,
want and need.
i’m just a mom;
but you’re all of me.
title sequence
​i’m just a mom,
the peak of womanhood,
before that
i was just a wife,
not once, but twice,
before that
just the eldest sister,
the surrogate mother,
before that
just a daughter
to an invisible father,
to a depressed mother.
before that
just a pregnancy,
a freak accident.
before that—
nothing.
when will i exist
untitled?
​
adrienne rich
planetarium
​Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
​
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
sylvia plath
the applicant
first, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
marina tsvetaeva
bound for hell
Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—
We, who have sung the praises of the lord
With every fiber in us, every cell.
We, who did not manage to devote
Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway
Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,
Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.
Every morning, every day, we’d rise
And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;
And we’d strike up the songs of paradise
Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,
We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,
Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been
Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:
The world was ours, each one of us a queen.
First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,
Then plaited with a starry diadem;
We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:
But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,
Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden
Where apple trees from paradise are found.
No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent
And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.
nikki giovanni
legacies
her grandmother called her from the playground
“yes, ma’am”
“i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less
dependent on her spirit so
she said
“i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does
lucille clifton
won't you celebrate with me
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
june jordan
poem about my rights
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
my self
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
an unknown author
keep your girlfriends
I sat on a porch in Waycross, Georgia on a summer day, drinking iced tea and visiting with my Mother. "Don't forget your girlfriends," Mother advised, clinking the ice cubes in her glass. "No matter how much you love your husband, you are still going to need girlfriends. Remember to go places with them now and then; do things with them. And remember that girlfriends are not only friends, but sisters, daughters and other relatives too."
What a funny piece of advice, I thought. Hadn't I just gotten married? Hadn't I just joined the couple-world? I was now a married woman, for goodness sake, not a young girl who needed girlfriends. But I listened to my Mom. I kept contact with my girlfriends and made more each year. As the years tumbled by, one after another, gradually I came to understand that Mom really knew what she was talking about.
Here is what I know about Girlfriends:
Girlfriends bring casseroles and scrub your bathroom when you need help. Girlfriends keep your children and keep your secrets.
Girlfriends give advice when you ask for it. Sometimes you take it, sometimes you don't. Girlfriends don't always tell you that you're right, but they're usually honest. Girlfriends still love you, even when they don't agree with your choices.
Girlfriends laugh with you, and you don't need canned jokes to start the laughter. Girlfriends pull you out of jams.
Girlfriends will give a party for your son or daughter when they get married or have a baby, in whichever order that comes! Girlfriends are there for you, in an instant and when the hard times come. Girlfriends listen when you lose a job or a friend. Girlfriends listen when your children break your heart.
Girlfriends listen when your parents' minds and bodies fail.
Girlfriends cry with you when someone you loved dies.
My daughters, sisters, family, and friends bless my life!
When we began this adventure we had no idea of the incredible joys or sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we would need each other.
Keep your girlfriends.
solange knowles
can i hold the mic (interlude)
i can't be a singular expression of myself, there's too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers, so many
anne sexton
in celebration of my uterus
Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a school girl.
You are not torn.
Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
and of the soul of the woman I am
and of the central creature and its delight
I sing for you. I dare to live.
Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.
Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.
Hello to the soil of the fields.
Welcome, roots.
Each cell has a life.
There is enough here to please a nation.
It is enough that the populace own these goods.
Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,
“It is good this year that we may plant again
and think forward to a harvest.
A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”
Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the ass of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.
Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
let me carry a ten-foot scarf,
let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,
let me carry bowls for the offering
(if that is my part).
Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,
let me examine the angular distance of meteors,
let me suck on the stems of flowers
(if that is my part).
Let me make certain tribal figures
(if that is my part).
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper,
for the kissing,
for the correct
yes.
lucille clifton
poem to my uterus
you uterus
you have been patient
as a sock
while i have slippered into you
my dead and living children
now
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me.