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4 Jan: "The Woman Is about Hair" by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

The woman is about hair
gathering on the ground and between the breasts
that move up and down with each breath
in suffering.
In twenty years I will exist.
Even if i’m dead in twenty years I will exist
more than I do now.
I shave my legs in the shower
until my ass goes numb.
The water gathers all of me around
and says “that’s what you get”
the same way men say
“that’s just how the world works”
as if they’re happy about it.
I make a prayer for you in front of the closet mirror
where the light from inside moves
around the room to see itself reflected.
The woman sees herself in everything and nothing.
You can open the news and read
anything you want to.
That’s the magic of being alive here.
You can even read about yourself
long after you’re dead.

2 comments:

  1. A lot of the same we heard in the last two poems. I don't know about Joshua Jennifer.

    I don't feel like I capture the narrator's struggles because the language comes off as cliché

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  2. Allie Jo DreadfulwaterJanuary 19, 2017 at 6:31 PM

    Again- it is interesting to think transgender here. The viewpoint seems masculine, but the words purposely try to feminize themselves.
    And, yes, the same tone of death. Poetry used as a release- as a sort of life lived separate from the narrator's own reality.

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