On Being Woman

I am

1. warrior, woman, flesh
2. who swallows rigid afflictions
3. my mother’s stout gaze
4. the trenches of the Pico Duarte

I am

1. instigator, observer, messenger
2. close-lipped within strummed harmonies and flushed cheeks
3. grains of mashed plantains between portly fingers
4. coarse like the english words laden on my mother’s tongue

I am

1. tainted lips of deceit
2. idle in navigation
3. clad in coarse oak
4. wound taut by crude honking and cigarette breath

I am

1. the nervous system constrained by lingering gazes
2. the cut beneath strangled sighs
3. the skepticism in my mother’s eyes when she closes the screen door
4. hazed brown coalescing with broadened moonlight

I am

1. the iron clutch on pepper spray
2. thrashed among gilded thread
3. my mother’s fervent prayers
4. the synonymous implications between woman and fear