Today's poem is by Carmen Calatayud

Growing Up Female Around American Shooters
       

To be female is to be raw 24/7.

Prodigal daughters with crooked haloes, oily hair

flesh full of open wounds that never close

because we are not desensitized:

We are only sharpened.

We wear helmets to protect our heads

from the low thunder of a coming stampede

that turns into gospel of guns:

Amateur killers coming for us.

We swing between tremors and sunlight—

Shaking under a desk or standing in a parking lot

where grackles pick at body bags.

Where is my body as we tread

between hustle and hallucinogenic?

We race to work fast food after school,

or run to huff spray paint in a rainbow of shades.

We're skilled at living in the ruins of our cities

despite nervous systems with the god blown out.

We are stars jumping earth to sky,

damned that we light the way for our dead.

I'm tired of drawing the blinds against muscular neon.

My throat is sore again.

Copyright © 2024 Carmen Calatayud All rights reserved
from This Tangled Body
FlowerSong Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission