Michelle Brewer

Does everyone know what this term ‘resting bitch face’ is? It’s a term coined by someone who is just generally unhappy with the fact that women aren’t smiling literally all the time. You’re like sleeping and he’s like “You have a bitch face.” And you’re like “I mean I’m literally taking a nap. So, I’m sorry. I don’t know? ” I’ve been doing this thing lately where I write odes to things I think I’m supposed to be ashamed of, which is largely how shame works. We think we’re supposed to feel it. We’re told we’re supposed to feel it. About the way we live and act and walk and speak and dress and are. We feel it because someone told us to. It’s not an organic feeling. I’ve been writing odes to things like that to counteract that feeling.

This is an ode to my bitch face.

You pink armour lipstick rebel steel cheek slit mouth head to the ground mean girl. You headphones in but no music. You house key turned blade. You quick step between street lights, strainer of pricks and chest beaters, laughter is a foreign language to your dry ice tongue.

There is something I don’t know
that I am supposed to know.
I don’t know what it is I don’t know,
and yet am supposed to know,
and I feel I look stupid
if I seem not to know
and not to know what it is I don’t know.

May you walk the path of beauty.
Know the direction of home is always within you.
Feel the daily benediction of
earth and wind
sun and water.

if you can still cry
it means you can still breathe

and if you can still breathe
it means you are still alive

and if you are still alive
it means you still have some work to do

A Rose blooms when she is ready
When She is ready
When She is ready
and not a moment too soon.

no
is a necessary magic

no
draws a circle around you
with chalk
and says
I have given enough

McKayla Robbin

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to all the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Louise Erdrich
From The Painted Drum: A Novel

I’m not okay today.
So, in the absence of okay,
what else can I be?

LET IT BE KNOWN

I worship the Goddess.

The one with tangled hair
where insects nest.

The one with blood-soaked thighs.

The one who crushes my concepts
with her razor teeth
and spits my mind into the wind.

The Wild will call you back.
Through half-remembered dreams
and sunsets painted
in burnt sienna
and vermillion flames
she will call you back home.
The coyotes will wake you
from your sleep
with their clarion call
to keep your eyes
wide open.

How long have you been sleeping?
How much have you forgotten?