3rd Wave Feminism

The KING! The KING!

Kingly debates and debacles

surround the love between ancients and yearlings.

Buttery wings

of saplings

glide and flip the earth,

over-turning the edges of things.

And the KING!

The KING is waiting to arrive.

“Arise, sprouts!

The time for bowing is past.

Your KING wishes you strong

and questioning.

The REALM requires your sass, your imagination . . .”

Imagine a nation of crawlybugs and leftovers.

Imagine you as a child, beaming

and bubbling     ,

               teeth full of splinters.

And imagine me.            Killing you.

            And imagine the EARTH relieved. 

            You are for what our mother

                has been waiting . . .

“Ew, Tina! Close your legs.”

              This is it.

Tina, you are beautiful.

So close your legs and kill yourself

for your Dear Old Mother Earth!

Cut yourself off from your own

exquisiteness.

Maybe it will be the last straw,

the last knocking and slapping of

knees and thighs,

last drip of power.

What you wish to hide,

we wish to devour.

Close your legs and kill yourself.

Send us back under the dirt.

Feed us to our own mother,

snarling and sniveling in angst,

starvation and regret.

Let her rip us open, but she’ll

find no blood, nothing

to quench her thirst.

Nothing to soothe her madness.

We’ve been all dried up.

God-damn you, Tina.

The grail is green with poison 

                a droplet apocalypse of

            injected virginal blame and

                         slut shame

torn, and

ripped and

raped, it seems

           by a tyrannical teen-aged KING,

when it is you

should be unraveling.