Emma Hair
BEHIND EVERY IRRATIONAL WOMAN
IS THE MAN WHO DROVE HER MAD
I understand now the screams
of jilted women, how they hurl pain
at their man (who’s no longer
their
man) to make them hear
all the words held
under bitten tongues
and swallowed like
bile, bitter pills
intended to maintain
equilibrium, but
equilibrium downshifts into stasis—
sluggish stagnant stasis
and the blood stops moving
until your feet are blocks of ice—your spirit,
a sunken stone
attached to your waist and tossed overboard
down
down
down
until nothing’s above
water except the tip
of your nose.
At first you keep your eyes open
but the warped kaleidoscope
view turns your stomach.
You stop struggling to cut the rope,
you grow accustomed to stasis—
silent and impassive as a Man o’ war
it glides in and becomes your new baseline
you grow so accustomed you don’t even feel
the warning stings:
get out
of the water, they say.
The women who scream
scream for all of us,
for all of the voices lost—
to the bubbles.
THE CAROUSEL
Scroll
Scroll
Scroll
Scroll
Scroll [your life away]
Scroll
through the
accomplishments
of others, drown
in them.
Buy these socks made
from natural deodorant
with sixteen thousand grams
of whey protein.
A bank tweets
about avocado toast,
you need
to lose
weight
stop eating
cheese and honey and
get your master’s degree
another degree
any degree
stop washing
your hair
use this oil
on your
face
pubes
head
body
cuticles
eyelashes
fill a swimming pool
and become a painting
another girl
from your school
is engaged / married / pregnant / travelling /
another victim
of a pyramid scheme
everyone’s publishing books
and winning
awards and
you’re swiping
at this faulty ATM
like it dispenses
McArthurs instead of envy
flipping through tarot cards
without stopping
long enough to construct meaning
everything blurred into
Death / Judgement / The Fool
Swiping
Swiping
Swiping
Take in all the information that exists, never stopping, don’t stop, you can’t
stop
what would happen
if you
[ S P A C E ]
everything about me seemed monstrous
incapable of being
[ ]
contained
by anyone,
[ ]
too vast and disconnect-
ed—confusing,
a m o r p h o u s,
[ ]
but cupped in your hands
my breasts were soft,
supported. In your hands
[ ]
my body was not this
unknowable force
[ ]
but a secluded beach.
cupped in your hands
[ ]
my overflowing words were drunk
like crystal water from a mountain stream.
[ ]
even the depression
eating me alive
which I feared
was a disease you could catch
even that you handled
[ ]
with more love than I could return.
what else can I do but worship
[ those hands
that heart ]
which never once asked me to shrink.
[ ]
that heart which manages to fit the whole world
[ ]
and still has infinite space
[ for all of me ]