#1:  Late Breaking Misogyny

As a woman, for the most part

I have been a failure.

This judgement, by itself

Evidence of years of self-inflicted terrorism

Against my own sex.

So when you ask me now

To praise on this page a woman of influence

I draw a blank.

Instead, I could provide an internal examination

X-rays of cuts and bruises to my sense of self

Probing for some latent feminism

Free-floating and occasionally attaching to cells

But stopping short of penetrating that last layer of skin.

If I asked these women, would they say the same?

How much damage had been done to them

And how much more by their own acquiescence

To a norm they did not invent

Until their DNA, programmed to remain silent

Took up arms, forced to the surface by rage.

But they were more courageous than me.

My praise is jealousy

I wish I were them.