Souriya

LAYAL RABAT

tw: rape

Souriya, Souriya, land of Syriacs and Assur

How many years must you suffer this curse?

I’ve been watching them starve, torture, and rape you for three years,

Tell me what to do, help me please.

Your temples of gods of all genders, shapes, sky, earth, fire, wind, moon, and sun,

destroyed and consolidated to only include the angry one.

I cannot speak for your daughters, I’ve been away for too long,

But their mournful cries haunt my dreams with their song.

Souriya, why do men treat you this way? Is it because you’re a woman they cannot oppress?

I grew up in a family of strong educated women,

I cannot believe how far you’ve regressed.

Souriya, your fields are dry,

The farmer cannot feed the children,

And he knows why.

Your rural citizens tried to join the city folk,

Unwelcomed they felt, so they decided to revolt.

You sure are developed! You’ve joined the modern age! 


With your own resources you’ve built up your own cage

Les femme

JAMIE WATSON

On the first date, you kissed that theatrical drama club girl beneath the canopy of your mother’s swing set in a way she never thought she would let herself be kissed by a man with hair on his face, a man who looked like a skinny lumberjack and could shred his guitar like love letters from a disembodied youth.

Her youth didn't occur to you that night, or any night.

Lying on your back under a bed of hazy Arizona starlight, she was fifteen and you were about to turn twenty, and in the moment that seemed all right because she was smart enough to know she loved you.

So when she told you, she didn't want to kiss that way anymore, with the slippery slope of your mouth invading hers, you held her chin in your hand and turned her about like a plump piece of fruit and told her she was cute.

When she told you, at fifteen years old, that sex was disgusting, you took it as a challenge, because every boy loves a challenge.

You were fine with her kissing other girls.

I mean what’s a girl to a girl, when she has a top score guitar hero to guard the closet door and make sure nothing gets in? Or out?

You tried your best to keep her protected, you tried so hard to make your motives go undetected for her sake because if you ever found the guy that did what you wanted to do with her, you’d kill him.

And what a sad situation it was for you, when she started to fill things in.

How she ripped into you, how bad it must have hurt when she got on top and kissed you the way you kissed her the way she kissed those other girls.

Poor thing.

How dare she raise questions when all she needs to know are the bumby bits of your body, how dare she sail her vessel with ideas instead of sinking into your bedsheets, how dare she skim her pocket stones when all you really want is to bone, how dare a girl love herself more than she loved your cock?

You poor, poor boy.

You had to be the judge, and the defendant.

You had to learn how to put up a fight and be independent because she was so manipulative.

She only looked like a little girl, she told you she wanted it.

How dare she lie for your sake?

Now she creates her own warmth at night in her bed. She can take off her dick when she needs to think with her head and she has girls spinning to know her name so they know what to say when they reach the edge of an uncovered tenderness, of real bouts of laughter that start from the inside out, of freshness and favors.

Of sun-buttered kisses that promise more than just an orgasm.

I hope that you fall in love with more than just your reflection,

I hope the girl who hops stages with you doesn't need your protection,

I hope you can peel away your armor and stop trying to be a knight because someday, you’re going to have to learn,

Girls don’t need your permission to be all right.

Journal excerpts

SHANNON YUSO

One day we’ll find a whole group of people who seek the truth.

We’ll listen to old records every day and nobody will watch TV.

We’ll write with our hands. We’ll cry in front of each other.

We’ll stop living by whatever identity others have assembled

for us from the jumble of last-minute decisions we’ve made.

I met someone beautiful yesterday.

She was smart and kind and had eyes like a cat and it was too much. for me. We

We kissed on mossy stone steps

and our teeth clicked together between wide smiles.

I’ve never smiled so much while kissing.

I don’t want to take a stand about it; get off my back.

Labels on boxes & categories of humans.

We need a new way. Stop defining, identifying all

as something else.

The facades, the insecurities, the judgment. 

Aren’t we all so sick of this?

They say it doesn’t stop, either.

And they wouldn’t lie about something as devastating as that.

So let’s start something new.

A revolution where we are good to each other.

And we take care of ourselves. And we think and empathize and place our hands

on each others’ shoulders and say, “you are important!”

Because it’s true.

Because you are important.

Because there’s nothing else that matters.

No, I’m not fucking sappy, I mean it.

It’s that cynical attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.

Stop laughing at people who are being honest. It’s hard to be honest.

Let’s just stop and think for a minute and try to say what we really mean.

Let’s run so fast that our feet can’t catch us.

Let’s jump down hills and spend endless bounds in the air!

Let’s not feel embarrassed ever again.

Let’s create everything we can think of and when we can’t think of anything else, we’ll dance and howl and burst into tiny infinite universes and sing as loud as we can.

And while we’re at it, we can quit judging others for who they

fall in love with?

And no, it’s not a phase for attention. 

Haiku

JAMIE WATSON

Don't try to tell me 

rape is your biology.                                 

You're not a damn dog.                                                                  

If you can't control the urge 

to be a monster                                                                     

what makes you a man?                                                                 

And for that matter                                                                                

I know my dumb, mixed breed mutt

has more class than you

Inverted Introvert

SARAI ALLEN

I learned how to turn myself inside out...

I ran my fingers through my hair and then cut it all off in an attempt to find someone new, someone who was living here all along...

I shook out every good idea I had and ran with them, clutched close to my heart like a small child because they need help to grow. I need help to grow… 

I have tripped and fallen more often than not and every time I have lain there, sometimes crying, sometimes smiling up at the ceiling, caught in this daze of purple smoke and Percocet pills.

I learned how to turn myself inside out and now every passing year is wrought with consequence, cause and effect. My decisions bite back all over my body and I am scarred underneath these clothes, it gets up under my skin. But beneath this layer of brown stretched over bones, I am hiding waves upon waves of emotion peeking out from under my sleeves. I will roll them up and expose myself to anyone willing to see, anyone willing to listen, anyone quiet enough to hear what I’m trying to say…

I’m trying to say that I went inside myself and this is what I found: a little girl masquerading in big girl shoes, a mother afraid of her own creations, a desperate friend in need of a prayer and a woman, who looks just like me. She is made of fire and elegance, like the kind I’ve been searching for. She is Bright eyes and elephant skin and I scarce believe she is real. I turn inside out and there she stands, radiant, ready to show me how to live. Ready to help that child stop growing up so fast, ready to tell that mother to love what she has made, for her creations will be her memories. Ready to hold a candle up to the dark heart of that fiend and pray she finds something that keeps her warmer than whiskey. She is so becoming, and I'm becoming her. I'm getting hotter and hotter and more elegant each day. My eyes are lighting up and my skin's getting tough and I am becoming her. I am no longer that little girl looking for her lost childhood. I've learned to love and be loved. Whiskey still warms me and it takes time for dark hearts to heal, but the point is I am healing. Sometimes it takes the help of the person living inside of you, waiting to be turned inside out.