I Owe My World to Snotty Nosed Kids

Zevida Germain

I owe my world to the Snotty nosed country kids Cus they don’t like to use tissues no they Wipe their noses on their hands, fingers, palms, arms, And when they run through the cattails and wheatfield they carry old plastic baseball bats

Covered in dirt from the ground where At least one of our great great great great great great Great great great great great great great great great grandfathers Is buried. he saw the world for the first time

The world owes me

At least some snotty nosed city kids

Cus sitting in my place in the most milky way i get So so so lonely when i can’t see little people on The blue-green-gas-water-solid floating orb they Saw me. And cut the trees and made mazes of Concrete so dark that even when they come out to play Basketball jump rope 4 square cops and robbers

I can see their shiny white shirts and notice The snot wiped on their sleeves

Snotty nosed kids all over owe

The world probably nothing cause they have missing-gap-crooked teeth leave them Under their pillows for pocket change but some like to Throw them up real real high to make new shiny constellations

Then back in time so the ancient greeks can name em and All of them know how to braid beads hair and bright woollen string, beat Scraps of metal on roads in with big big sticks passed down like Ancestral knowledge of fossilised mothers and fathers so I get inspiration and braid together this galaxy into A Handkerchief so they may Wipe their noses

To Be Woman

Michelle M. Ilunga

Content warning: This piece contains mentions of violence and abuse towards women.

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”

This is the opening paragraph of late radical feminist, Valerie Solanas’sself-published work, S.C.U.M Manifesto–S.C.U.M standing for “Society for Cutting up Men.” Lately, this opening paragraph along with similar radical feminist sentiments have been on my mind. Lingering. Festering. All prompting the same question: What does it mean to be woman?

From the moment I was born into this world, a world that has long proved its violent hatred for women, my body became public property. Born to be ogled at, spoken for, grabbed, beaten down and muzzled like the bitch I've so customarily been called.

But that's what I want, right? I go out at night. I drink. I flirt. I have sex. So I'm asking for it, right? Then I shouldn't be angry when the first thing my employer sees as I enter an interview is my chest. I shouldn’t be angry when a stranger grabs my crotch in the middle of a club. I shouldnt be angry when the boy in my grade nine summer school class says he wants to rip the slit in my dress and rape me. Right?

But I am. I'm angry. I'm angry. I'm angry and I have every right to be.

GRAPHIC RENEE KENNEDY GRAPHIC JACKSON DUNNIGAN

Angry that my identity is reduced to my body. That my sex is above my humanity. That no matter what I have to say, think, do, in the eyes of the world and the men around me, I am a shell to be ogled at, spoken for, grabbed, beaten down and muzzled. Now I know. This is what it means to be woman.