Raging and Rotting

by Gwendolyn Hill

suck your breath through those pearly whites pull your sleeves down, hike your skirt up Shut up and take it!

the old man at the liquor store tells you you’re pretty, your lighter fluid is on the counter. eyes closed he’s a human torch, shrieking and wailing… open. Shut up and take it!

better cover that shoulder before your entrails spill out on the tile! these boys will lick all your guts off the linoleum if you let ‘em.

you’re just like your mother (in all the wrong ways) if I use myself to clean you up, what’s going to be left of me? who’s to take care of the woman and her rage?

don’t wait too long or that water of yours will turn tepid, honey. exactly how long do you plan to rot away? how will you steep and distill that anger of yours? that stomach acid’s boiling up through your nostrils!

bare it all. open your heart so we can take a bite and leave your socks on, I like you with those socks on. Shut up—you winking or just blinking?—take it!

tongue gray, eye bags to carry your soul but your hair got lightning through it. electricity through your veins, so get a move on, girl twist the knife, you tell the mirror

“you’re sickening”—no you’re sick-ening, listen— look in the mirror but can’t look in jealousy seethes… it’s leaking from your pores, and you’re turning this thing into a slip n slide, body down the drain— down, down, down. your ego’s cracking and it’s starting to show. man, you must hate your mom a hell of a lot. …it’s in your blood, remember? go on, fulfill the fantasy. spin around and fill up my hands. look! underneath the stucco— the fingernails you painted over light at the end of the tunnel blisters your skin, peel, peel away bit by bit. what are you searching for? stay a while. inhale the dust and dirt: get down to business. Shut up and take it.

Design by Ashley Luong

closest to you.

Those with a lack of appreciation for differing perspectives will kid themselves as a “painter,” a harborer of beauty if only to reinforce the status quo — judging and reducing you to characteristics that dare to from your depths only to face a wall higher from which you can climb. A dismissal of your emotions, excitement, sadness, or anger, as painful as a vacuum consuming and disparaging your entire existence, executed by a loved confidante. When you are a Black woman, you learn to trust anticipation in your eyes for the next few sentences. With a mind faster than your mouth, you feel great satisfaction being able to speak without filters, yet you cannot seem to make eye contact with anyone. If you met their gaze, you know you would slowly retreat toward the broken cage and desperately try to rearrange the lingering glass shards.

Enraged and Offended, Mad, Black Woman.

Water, quiet, like unspoken words, drips. Eyes spill out underneath the melting clouds.

A lone figure stands in the rain.

Is it you? The one with the folded um-

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