Straight Up

I’m not speaking in myth or vagaries

or trying to muddle the plot. I’m not

interested in keeping you guessing or testing

the waters. This is straight-up lament,

unspent anger, the smell of danger so familiar

it’s smoke when the house already burned up in the fire.

It’s one more body on the pyre. How many more

women have to die here to identify what underlies here?

The pandemic is in the numbers. We grow number

to statistics, all the sadistic dicks killing and beating

and licking their own wounds on Sunday afternoons

when hypocrisy reigns Supreme.

Half the world dreams, the other half screams.

So, no, these words aren’t smoke screens, they’ll choke me

if I don’t make them heard. I might paint a white bird

or a wild beast or a doughnut shop as a pretty picture

so you won’t look away but all I’m trying to say is,

Everywoman has the right to choose

a life that doesn’t belong to arguments being used against her.

When she stares

at herself in glass, not to have to ask,

When will I be free again? I want her to trust

her body as a friend, her own name, a safety net.

You bet your ass I can spin a hella rhyme

but it’s no longer about poetry—it’s about time

we let the healing begin.

***

Emily Shearer is a poet, naïf intuitive painter, and yoga/writing/spiritual coach. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcarts and “Best of”’s, and published in Kestrel, Silk Road Review, Please See Me, jellybucket, Fiolet & Wing, emry’s journal online, psaltery & lyre, West Texas Literary Review, Clockhouse, Ruminate, and Cave Wall (forthcoming) among others. She is the Poetry Consultant for Wide Open Writing. You can find her on the web at bohemilywrites.net