The Poetry Marathon

Dear Cotton Candy Princess,

Who knew that with shaking hands,
you’d kill your captors,
no prince needed.

Who knew that with trembling eyes,
you’d challenge your suitors to
listen,
understand,
trust.

Do you have to answer to each other for
every dragon slayed?
every witch enraged?
every promise broken?
every heart stolen?

Who knew that with aching intentions you’d devour yourself.
Eat yourself whole, to examine each part.

Did you really take a knife and preform your own autopsy?

Here was where you created your own tourniquet and filed for divorce.
Here was where, in your desperation to be loved,
you went bobbing for love in acid, and came away with cavities and raw skin.
Here was where the gun was cold on your temple and the restraining order was paper in your hands,
and the man was horrible monster.
Here was where you whittled away as much of the rot as you could.
Here is where the scars shine
-soft pink and kissable.

Who knew that when love finally arrived,
he’d be every wish you ever made
– to your stuffed animals
– to falling stars
– to the moon
– to yourself.

Every wish, every promise, every pray –
made flesh and bone, almost two years before you were born,
before you ever even knew what you wanted,

He was there.

Motorcycle speeds, slick kisses, and stability – a potent potion for learning to love yourself again.
Who knew that with machinery, patience, and absolute tenderness, he’d heal you.

He knew.
He knew so that you could too.
He knew until you both did.

Best regards,

Cotton Candy Queen

This body, this ego, this soul –
I’m not sure which, but something is rotten.
Only the Evil Queen knows, but
she’s not making the same mistake twice.
She won’t send the woodsman with his pants around his ankles this time.
I wish she’d just come with her knife,

or maybe a sliver of mirror.

At almost 200 pounds, surrounded by ripe apples and quiet men,
I finally left their table.
Only the Evil Queen knows, but
she’s not sharing her apple cider vinegar spells anymore.
She’s taken every scale, tape measure, and mirror.
She won’t tell us who the fairest is.
We become ever-shrinking violets, our dresses hang.
As scarecrow shaped sirens, we call out for validation –

or maybe a sliver of mirror.

When I peer into my father’s wishing well,
I see now at 30 what I did at 20.
My self-induced lycanthropy, covered in polar bear’s fat and woman’s fear,
has shed. Only the soft white pelt remains.
I am afraid now, and only the Evil Queen knows –
what it’s like to be made of fur and fight, filled with pills, and carved

with a sliver of mirror.

My childhood tasted like favoritism,
fresh, hot-off-the-grill patriarchy seasoned,
guiltless bites of “don’t talk so loud,
don’t have that opinion, don’t show that much skin.”

Devouring a life long diet of “stop crying” and
“no one will love you if you eat like that.”

Partially cooked platters of hypocrisy and conditional love.

So, I hid chocolate under my pillow and snuck out
to find validation from boys who never loved me.
All the while, consuming half chewed snack packs of “I hate my mother.”

As a child, my mother encouraged us to feast on the words of God,
to consume hate and discrimination by the handful because,
according to her, my white skin was the only worthwhile thing about me.

It wasn’t long before I started to feed myself from the books I read.
To twist compassion around my fork twines
and slurp up empathy was a singular revolution for my soul.

When I tasted diversity for the first time,
I knew that I’d never get enough.

Some of us are
Bird Women

Frail, pale, and shaking
eyes red,
we hunch over –
ashamed

We retell our tales of abuse and rape
abuse and rape
abuse
abuse
abuse
until it feels like we are talking about someone else.

Just a bedtime story,
another time,
another place.

Bird women live trapped in arched cages of our own design.

Each bar carefully crafted with
barbwire intentions
Delicately woven together with our belief in their potential –
to be.

more loving

more kind

more human

“I gave up the sunlight just so he’d love me.”

Bird women are weak

until they’re not.

As our broken wings heal
and our clipped wings grow,
we burn.

To reclaim our wholeness,
bird women will burn down
bird women will burn away
bird women will burn-

a phoenix from the ashes

we rise

we soar

we forgive ourselves and learn from our cages.

Bird women – I love you.

I’m so excited! This stretched me so much as a writer and my ability to push through when I feel like I can’t write anymore. Let’s do this!

I’m blinded by love and hate.

In loving you, I hate myself.

I’m bond by hate and love.

Your hate makes it hard to breathe,

so I love you, hoping it’ll be enough.

The Queen of Hearts never wanted children

but when she met Alice,

she knew.

She had spent a lifetime making mistakes,

cheating on her husband, and eating too much,

but what was she to do during those spells of emptiness?

The Queen had to find entertainment somehow,

So why not chop off a head or two?

Afterall, blood tastes better with fear.

Stars used to dance and fall in love.
They dreamed during the day
and told stories throughout the night.
They were friends with the moons and
guardians of the plants.
Comets taught the stars to shine
and Pluto always made them smile.

Chaos grew bored and hungry.
After he gathered the black holes
and quasars, he pulled and mashed
Earth into something only he could enjoy.
The trauma of humans will be
enough to sustain him for millions of years.

The stars have stopped laughing and dancing.
They now watch us and cry.

America is lost and

no longer knows herself,

but truly did she ever?

Land of the white and

home of the male.

My skin is a traitor,

my body a prisoner.

When we we have been dismantled

and there is nothing left worth saving,

will we admit we were wrong then?

I know no home.

I know no land.

I am an agent of those

fighting to be free.

The greatest love story I know is
Harley Quinn and the Joker.
They pick each other again and again and again.

No matter how violent or volatile or unhealthy,
they keep slowly killing each other.

We are all slowly dying anyway, so why not
have great sex and inside jokes along the way.

He hates me, you know?

Truly wishes I was dead. I think if he could,
he’d steal a move from the Joker and
push me off a building.

I’m not as smart as Harley Quinn,
but I know enough to know
that her and I are just ignoring the signs
until love kills us.

Ever known anyone truly in love with himself?
I have. It’s maddening.
The lies. The secrets. The cruelty.
It’s like being in love with a cranky toddler
who blames you for everything that goes wrong.

When white trash love story meets upper class meets
comic bad guys romance. That’s us.
So insanely happy.
So content to just kill each other.

They say Harley was crazier than the Joker,
she pushed harder and faster and was more reckless.
Maybe that’s why I love her so much.
Because to love someone who’s crazy,
you have to be crazier than they are just to survive.