The Second Sex

She is at times
Crouching,
At times
Erect.
Sometimes dressed,
Often naked,
Arms pressed
Beneath her swelling breasts.
Queen of heaven,
Empress of hell,
Whence she crawls forth,
Or flies,
A serpent.
A dove.
She is manifest
In the mountains,
The springs of water,
Creating life.
Killing.
Retrieving the dead.
Capricious,
Cruel as nature.
She reigns
Over all of Aegean,
Syria, Antolia.
She is Ishtar,
Astarte,
Gaea, Rhea, Cybele.
We are
Isis.

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

Muse

I am Lorca’s iguana,
Kafka's spine
Schopenhauer’s sloth,
Rimbaud’s barren love child.
I am Blake’s opium stain,
Burroughs needle
In the grove of the vein,
Ginsberg’s anus,
Kerouac’s road,
Millers Capricorn
Hot white load.
I am Wordsworth’s daffodil,
Hunter s Thompson’s
Little white pill,
Sartre’s word,
Poe's death bird,
Sextons lover,
Bukowskis' another.
I am Waldons log,
Dylan’s dog,
Hughes crow,
Plath's sweet low.
I am Elliot’s wasteland,
Beatrice’s snow-white hand,
Carrols Alice,
Neruda's phallice.
I am Jims nod,
Nietzsche’s god,
Gibran's east,
Yeats rough beast,
Ownes doomed youth,
Rilke's truth,
Huxley’s mage.

I am my own blank page.

I lost my identity today

I lost my identity today.
It slipped away,
like a wiley dog
on a thin leash in the park.
It didn’t even kiss me farewell,
like an infidel lover
leaving in the midst
of a hot stale night.

I searched everywhere,
picked every star apart,
smashed every glass to pieces.

Others told me I’d find it-
in the bottom of an empty wineglass,
the last drag of a joint, the fizzle
of LSD on my tongue. I’d find it
in the puddles on cheap city nights,
in the crystal splinters shattering my nose.

Friends offered to lend me theirs,
sometimes I’d steal from strangers,
running down the street with
their identity clutched in my fist,
like a bright woven scarf
flailing behind in the wind.


But draping it over
my bare shoulders
was like wearing
a silk slip in the rain.
Clinging, chilled to the bone.

I’ve got used to sleeping alone,
standing naked in supermarket queues.
And when people ask about me,
who I really am.
I shrug, letting the labels be rain
sliding off my back,
forming puddles, mirrors
on the floor,
to watch your reflection
grow empty.