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Female Symphonies
By, Lanie Wester
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Table of Contents For Malala------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 3 Selene and I Once were Friends ----------------------------------------------------page 4 The Chipping Teeth of Showgirls ---------------------------------------------------page 5 For Joan--------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 6 Apology to Aphrodite---------------------------------------------------------------page 7 Bible Studies--------------------------------------------------------------------------page 8-9 Queens----------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 10 To You----------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 11 How to Rebuild-----------------------------------------------------------------------page 12 If He comes Looking --------------------------------------------------------------- page 13 They Never Cried Wolf--------------------------------------------------------------page 14-15 Daughter of Zeus---------------------------------------------------------------------page 16 Dinner, Dreaming, Blooming------------------------------------------------------page 17 Museums------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 18 How to Love a Goddess-------------------------------------------------------------page 19
For Malala (current event poem) Knowledge is power, this I know. 20 Pakistani girls all in a row with opals for eyes, throw stones outside my window into dirt. The humid air of Swat pulls at their foreheads and they sink their brown hands into one another’s hair. The teachers call them inside and they begin to follow each other like ducklings, their beads rustling off their narrow necks. The sound of slamming shutters tells me to be silent. I have heard them calling, their voices pervading a once calm air like crickets luring mates. They trek the hills of my land like they own it, like they tend to its fields, like they lend it life. They meet me here with bullets, one, two, threesoon I am gliding on pavement. I awake to a world flooded over in media coverage and the lingering taste of salt. My father holds my heart in his hands and is trying to stitch it together with loose thread, his roughed hands trembling at my bedside. Gospels gather in my throatI am drowning in my own thoughts it seems. 20 Pakistani girls won’t go to school today. For 20 Pakistani girls, the world is watching and they are scared. 20 Pakistani girls will cling to their mothers come morning and gently ask where I’ve gonemy window will be empty. I will arise from this tomb enlightened, spit in the face of those who oppose us98 million Pakistani women, watch them try and bury us all.
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Selene and I Once were Friends Each night you find your way to my step and I can’t help but feel sorry for you. You don’t have anywhere to go, just an old dove with fingers too calloused to do much of anything. I invite you in, set up the table like I always do, you insisting only tonight. It’s fine because I don’t mind, and perhaps maybe I’ve grown to like you. I cut you two slices of honeydew and you eat them sloppily with juice running down your jaw, sputtering between bites how much you’ve missed me. I nod and smile, and once you’re done I pour us coffee. You tell me the same stories you always do, how you hitchhiked Europe and met the pope. I don’t believe you but I nod to keep you happy because I know most of the time you’re not. The clock’s arms dance their same routine, and before long you’re hunched over on my couch, your white skin pouring onto my Carpet. I decide not to wake you, and fall asleep in my kitchen chair with purple running down my eyes, my temples pounding like a metronome. I awake the next morning to find you gone, the only thing you leave a black coat with unsewn buttons. I know you’ll be back tonight to take it with you.
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The Chipping Teeth of Showgirls Pretty girl, silly girl, with diamonds in your eyes, falling to your bruising skin like dew. They tell you men all hate a woman’s cry. So you wipe the jewels to lullabies, till your freckles match your cheeks’ hue. Pretty girl, silly girl, with diamonds in your eyes. A dress of silk tied round your hips, swaying into skies, with red lipstick smeared upon crooked smiles laid askew. They tell you men all hate a woman’s cry. So you stand with poise in ballroom sweat, heat collecting on your thighs, and smile when he says he loves you, lies in black and blue. Pretty girl, silly girl, with diamonds in your eyes. Corroded into him, dancing as desert snakes in disguise, his hands on your collar, tugging at the vines you grew. They tell you men all hate a woman’s cry. Half-moon lips and honey tongues, back steady as he shies his ringed knuckles to your flesh, a touch you thought you knew. Pretty girl, silly girl, with diamonds in your eyes, They tell you men all hate a woman’s cry.
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 For Joan These swollen lips are turning black, the ends of your hair crisping like oil hitting a stove, that which is left of it. You are rising like a liberated flag at its post, the wind greeting you with a billow of toxins, though you have felt this way for some time. If you are thinking at all, I hope it is of a grander beyond, not of the men who put you into golden armor, then abandoned you to flames when evil came calling. Perhaps you are happy to leave then, happy to go knowing you have left the earth with this burden lifted from your shoulders. If this is the case, then I am gladI hope now you are relieved, this world never treated you the way you deserved, anyways. God will greet you as the martyr you are, a heroine lost but found again. You will return to this burnt Earth in due time, return to finish the work he has left you.
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Apology to Aphrodite I am sorry they have done this to youstripped you of yourself until you were a perfect mold of clay, your fingers meant to pluck jewels from apple trees, not command the armies you and others were born to rule. When they found you on the beach, sea foam entangled in your golden locks, you were already a womanthe moon hanging from your breast. They took you into their home like a lost dog, polished you off with silk and there, a goddess a was sculpted. I am sorry that you have been cheatedwhile the Gods command the heavens with their tongues, you are left to the eyes of wanderers, lust filled heathens who would manipulate you to their content. Beauty fades, but you, you are forever. I am sorry that you are cursed with the burden of love, my darling, cursed to carry such a thing on your neckI can’t imagine how tired you are. Your lavender cheeks are fading to gray now, your eyes puffing from eternal sun, perhaps one day you can break this chain that binds you. Perhaps one day, after your brittle body turns to soot, when beauty is no more, perhaps then you will be free.
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 Bible Studies God is a womanwho suckled me at her breast at the dawn of creation, her fingers bending the heavens as she cradled my cheeks. She pulled the earth from her mouth like an iridescent orb, growing and growing like the swelling belly of a mother. I marveled as she molded it between her celestial thumbs. With a kiss she made the skies, painting them with her tongue shades of blue and yellow like a painter’s sloppy canvas. She pinched my cheeks and my eyes shed a tear, dropping to her prized creation. I had made the oceans. She beseeched clouds in her mind and crafted them into figurines. With a single breath she brought them to life, gently hanging them atop the world she had rounded. We watched together as it grew, how skies turned to lilac, turned to gold, how figurines turned to killers turned to lovers. Our eyes grew tired of common sites, we yearned for something more and so she made it. It was an ugly thing, I thought, skinny and tall, four lanky limbs jutting from its torso. She held them like dolls, gently setting them in her playpen, the way a mother would set china atop a table. Soon there would be more. They loved the mother who bore them into this world with outstretched palms
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and singing lips. At night they hummed her name as they sent her gifts through the sparks of their firesI hadn’t seen her so happy. Time passed, as did their love. And soon these songs had ceased and the fires put out, her name becoming an obsolete myth. Soon they were praising others with foreign names. They crowded their home like pests, ripping the grains from their soil and burning their trees like cigarette ash. A bothered Earth has left her frigid, and she hasn’t spoken to me in years. Her eyes and body hang like pruned grapes, a defeated woman over a defeated world. Earth has forgotten the woman, the mother, the lover, the giver. As I witness this world being pulled through like thread, I wonder if they’ll ever remember.
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Queens The French queen is dead, her headless body rotting in an unmarked grave. Did she die from beheading or a truly troubled soul? Anne failed her husband, no heir for the grand monarch. She lost her head to a mad king who never quite understood genetics. Cleo, mad with lust, killed her brothers in a night, made the rest look weak. She’d take Rome in a day, but tiny kingdoms bore her
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To you: To the boys who play me like a chessboard, I must say I’m impressed. When you take the pieces from my grip, you are never sloppy, Always precise, always sure To clear the table when you are done. I am drowning in your words, darling, drowning as you coat each sound with sultry sugar, my body trembling as you speak. Perhaps you like watching me shake, watching as you take control over what I feel, what I think, what I am. For years you have played me this way, like an old violin whose strings lay out of tune. And for years I was flattered, because even after I cried, you came back with your words like velvet as you always did, wiping away my streaks of mascara. I was your girl, you wouldn’t give up on me yet. And in those years I found myself crawling, delicately dancing over eggshells, keeping silent, laughing when you wanted, speaking when you desired, I became the perfect porcelain doll. You taught me how to be wanted and I complied, but I soon grew too hollow for your love. You’ve left me searching for who I was, I have become a ghost of the girl from years past, while you light another cig and tell me to get over it. And dammit, I wish I could. Because my lungs are exhausted, tirelessly wasting breaths on you. I pray for the day I can rid myself of you, cut away this sinew that binds us, be strong enough to tell you I’m tired, to tell you the game is over, and to tell you I have won.
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How to Rebuild Woman inherits the Earth after man decides it has bored him. He leaves her there to sweep up the dirt he refused to clean, her fingers coated in a thick layer of volcanic ash. She will scrub the land until it is new again, Until it is as green as the eyes she used to have, that have Since turned to a dreary slate. She spends her nights turning onto a cold side, these calls have gone unanswered, her belly is swelling like the moon. She often wonders if she were empty if he would crawl to her willing skin once more, perhaps if she hollows her body he will love again. But he won’t, because love is not in his vernacular, love is simply the fables his mother told him as a child, love is nothing more. So she is left to whatever he leaves her, left to linger in a world he has deemed unworthy. If scrubbing away his scent was so easy, he would already be forgotten. He has left a stain that cannot be erased with detergent and fabric softener, she will be ridding herself of him for decades. Her body is a temple he has desecrated, left uncleansed, upheaved, in ruinssacred walls brought down until they were nothing but a pile of scattered shards. She is still picking up the pieces.
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If He Comes Looking To the wounded women who wander here, let it be known that you are safe. To the men that may follow you, let it be known that here they are not welcome, and at my breast you may lay your troubled heads. You have wrapped your bodies in milky cloths, and escaped through creaky windows when the moon swept across the dirt roads like scattered ash. Like silent armies in silver hoods, you danced across the rugged terrain like crooked ballerinas and to my arms you ran. Come morning he will come looking for yourev up his truck with his face leaking red, He’s coming for you little dove, my my, he’s coming for you. Let him then. If man is as mighty as he claims to be, let him come and let him try and pry you from my hearth. These wounds will heal, my love, black and blue are not eternal and neither is he. He is not the best this world has to offer, you are. You, with spindles for fingers, you can weave A thousand homes but he? He will rot like the fruit he spits from his gums
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They Never Cried Wolf (form poem) I sit with girls who crumble earths between their fingers, send words spiraling out their mouths. Who said delicate came in the form of female? At lunch, they stick glass between their gums and dare you to egg them on. It is 4:21 am but don’t think because it’s late they don’t know those are your cigarettes lingering by the porch light. They wrestle between classes, their legs tattooed in light bruising, sticking gum beneath tables in the hope they will stick to your fingers. They say screw Aphrodite. Give me Athena, give me Artemis, give me all knowing. I was not born from sea foam, erupting into sands. These delicate hands smash states, corrode bodies from within, deface plaques on walls, hoping you slip up on the glass. You’d like to think they were born in museums, glass edges along their bodies, marble noses, robed in lights sent on from Zeus himself. Their limbs placed on pedestals behind fogged mirrors, perfect dolls for perfect fingers. And still you think a touch will erode them, delicately piecing them apart, little did you ever know. They buried their sorrows with their hatchets, knowing they would find them the next day with muddy edges, glass cut beneath their nails. They warned them delicate wasn’t easy, that killing it was its best hope, lightly praying in their minds they would forgive them. On their fingers, they counted to ten. Numbers was all they could count on. They took the words you spat at them head on, swallowed them whole till their stomachs turned to graveyards. They knew how to hide you, how to hold you down till your fingers no longer clawed into their porcelain cheeks. Glass was not the enemy, you were. You, with green lights rolling from your tongue. These lies aren’t as delicate as they used to be. In fact, the word delicate takes on new meaning. Heads strong on their shoulders they whipped your perceptions till light escaped your throat. Who knew the female could turn moons to glass, now wielding swords for fingers. Nobody knew delicate could be demanding. Glass windows on
 churches, praying with fingers to a God without light.
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Daughter of Zeus (form poem) She upheaves mosques in Istanbul like Zeus, and rocks Giza with the first fist of father Zeus. When she trips on forests because of her large feet, she blames it on her father; the mighty size of Zeus. They’ve caged her before as a commodity, an ancient jewel, the only standing daughter of Zeus. And she broke their chains like candlesticks, stretching her fingers high, waiting for him there; him, Zeus. Yet he left her, forgotten and alone, an outcast in a world who had left the old gods in ruins, even Zeus. O0p[[He, who made skies cry gold, left Romans cowering at his feet. the God of Gods leaves her to ashes, crawling till her blood erases Zeus. No more ties, no more fables, the Greeks died out ages ago. yet giants have lived here forever. Daughters of Zeusroaming through cities, searching for Olympus in concrete Hells, where’s the father she counted on? Perhaps Zeus is dead, his grave dug up for treasures-Lanie- he’s not worth that much, is he? In time he’ll return with goblets of silver and demand to be called father, not Zeus.
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i. Dinner The woman you once prayed to serves you dinner from a hot pan and pours her soul into idealism. Her eyes as deep as your pockets, she grinds her ribs like grated cheese with corsets and painted ribbons. And still you will demand seconds. You twirl the legs of your spaghetti and slop them into your mouth, the plate balancing on her head. She smiles as you chew. ii. Dreaming While you snore away your nights she is soaring. The queen of lavender skies, She commands more than you and you are helpless to stop it. She hangs your body from her thumbs like limp threads, wilting tulips, the rotting fruit dangling from a branch. Here she is your God, the one you preach and fear, the one who you believed would pluck the world from this sinful place, yet she has been here all along. iii. Blooming You have not destroyed her darling, black and blue are the hues of warpaint and she has been fighting for decades. This blood on her hands belongs to you, and one of these days she’ll forget being passive. Patient, she is, a willing lily waiting to bloomshe is waiting for your faith to wilt.
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Museums You and I meet by jade eggs And roman remains, Hidden within Mongolian spears. Your curious feet lead you to my stoop, And you marvel at my sizeLadies aren’t this big. You’re repulsed by my exposed breastsWhy? Have you not seen woman unrobed or is anatomy frightening my friend? You are confused, because here they call me goddess but God is a man, is he not? There is only one, I must be a fraud. You want to know, how this behemoth woman with milk for skin is a God? How has she earned this title, what realm does she watch over? I wish I could tell you, but these marble lips are stuck together like honey, and history is hard to teach in such short time. Soon you’ll be scattering again, wobbling like an overgrown peach forgetting my face all together.
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How to love a goddess: After Kait Rokowski’s “How to Cure a Feminist”
Step 1: Be patient with her. She will come home with her marble arms dangling like beaten corn stalks and her lip bleeding with a swollen tongue. She will be crass with you-‐ pull away when you ask about her wounds, and tell you it is none of your business. Trust that she’s telling the truth, that the words she utters are gospel, somewhere written down in gold. Step 2: Listen. The burdens she carries are enough to break the backs of armies, pull warriors to their knees and make men cower in their worn out trousers. She will not look at you the way a startstruck lover would, she simply does not have the time. There will be days when she will tear down your house in a fit of rage and rebuild it with you, and apologize. There will be days when she will look at the world and wonder if it’s even worth her work, her calloused hands, her ever aching soul-‐ a thing she had forgotten existed. Catch her as she is falling and remind her who she is, as she will often forget. Step 3. Appreciate. She did not choose to live this way, and even she sometimes needs your help, though she will be afraid to ask. Take her hand, show her she is more than a psychiatrist in the sky, that she matters, that she is more than worthy. Love her the way you thread together cloth, slowly and with ginger hands.