SHOUT(24)

Melinda’s trick is looking hard in the mirror, absolving herself and cracking open doors to the next place, but the girl at that school, so haunted, smashed all the reflections, boarded up the windows, and bolted the doors forever stuck at fifteen years old judged to serve a life sentence for what they did





overheard on a train




   “You just let him

   do it

   cuz if you don’t

   his friends talk

   shit about you

   online”

   she wiped

   at the rainfall

   of tears, but they

   drowned her

   before the train could stop





Danuta Danielsson




We’re all born to fight but few are ever trained, instead they tell us

“Be nice.”

Danuta’s mother survived a Nazi concentration camp alive but scarred,

so when the Nazis marched through her Swedish town in 1985, Danuta hauled back

and smacked a Nazi

in the head with her purse.

It was a big purse.

She snapped, they said couldn’t take it anymore reached her breaking point.

We should teach our girls that snapping is OK,

instead of waiting

for someone else to break them.





musing




Ophelia and Persephone walk into a coffee shop bringing with them the smell of cinnamon and rain.

“Latte?” asks Ophelia.

Persephone nods. “With an extra shot. You?”

“Earl Grey, hot, with room.”

I turn off my music, keep the earbuds in, type gibberish so I can spy

they shoot rock-paper-scissors for who pays the bill.

Persephone wins, grins, orders scones with jam.

Ophelia leaves a huge tip.

Unwilling avatar for silenced girls, our Ophelia, seen only though the male gaze; pale gray construct constantly throwing herself at boys and rivers. Found a few strands of her hair on a berry bush which I plucked and wove into the tapestry unconscious, she later sprang from my forehead, fully formed, as Melinda.

They chatter softly, unaware or uncaring of the hungry looks

thrown their way from the men and the boys envying the steam curling around the girls’ faces. They butter and jam the scones, erupt into laughter over a private joke.

They speak

their own language, those two.

I ran into Persephone’s mom years ago at the grocery store, both of us worried about our daughters,

all the daughters, captured by the underworld and pulled out of sight. Demeter wiped my tears and fed me pomegranate seeds which I swallowed whole. Their taste flooded back in my mouth when Lia awoke, the wintergirl grateful to talk mad at me for listening.

My coffee stone-cold, fingers cramped from typing

it’s time to head home,

walk back through the woods.

As I gather my tools, the girls quiet fall into each other’s eyes,

fingers entwined on the crumbs knuckles satined with jam and butter Persephone tucks a lock of Ophelia’s hair behind the shell of her ear and Ophelia takes Persephone’s hand and gently kisses the palm.

I grin and close the door behind me.





anatomy




But anyways

I’ve got a bone to pick with you Ken doll

about your bone, or rather the lack of your bone, boner, or any boning tools, not to mention a piss stick, cuz I grew up with a small black-and-white television before cable,

only three channels

(and PBS, which made my Republican mother suspicious)

plus the wrench we used to turn the dial, which broke two houses earlier— we had limited options for knowledge.

But anyways, cuz I was raised in a plastic-wrapped, white-bread-and-mayonnaise, sexless world,

one sister, no brothers, two puritan parents, all of my anatomical knowledge of boys came from you, Ken,

you dickless wonder.

I was so confused!

I had friends who had brothers so I knew boys had a . . .

THING

and that the THING was their kryptonite cuz if a boy got fresh

(this confused me, too, cuz “fresh” was a word that belonged next to “lettuce” or “eggs”) I was supposed to kick them between the legs because the THING

was apparently quite fragile and kicking it would really hurt and the boy would leave me alone. One time this came up at the dinner table (at the parsonage: nice tablecloth, candles—just picture it)

and my father, coughing loudly, red-faced, said I should always punch him in the gut first and reserve

THING-kicking to the very last, if the boy was so stupid

that my punch didn’t scare him off.

But anyways, I took off your clothes, Ken.

A lot.

I studied between your legs, front and back baffled

cuz I was pretty sure

that the vaguely putty-colored, plastic, flat surface of your crotch was not the THING

of playground lore

or my father’s discomfort.

My imagination tended toward castles and dragons and talking mountains, not your junk.

Not even after my own Barbie bits— boobs, butt, bulbous bodacious babeness