POETRY BY ALIX OLSON

Subtle Sister

So we've learned Karate
Carry knives on our runs
Weild words like weapons
Prepared glares like hidden guns.

We've deconstructed
Demystified
Tried retribution
Remethologized.

We've been diagnosed with your diseases
And still tried pleases
Tried tears
Tried Jesus.

You wanna see what it's like down here in this pool
Of someone else's rules?
Well, jump in!
Take a swim!
Or just sit in this pit
Squishing their toes in someone else's bullshit.
We do it all the time.

Still we've tried being patient
Collected
Calm
Nice.
Tried praying
Tried laying you
Paying the price.

We've learned to scream until our throats throbbed.
What else do you do when your cunt's being robbed?

And they say
"You've made progress, girls,
Take a rest in between."
But see, when you're resting
Someone else is progressing,
That's what I've seen.

So, I take back the whispers.
The cute, mute act.
And the high-pitched giggles
Yeah, I take 'em back.

I won't avoid your stare
Avade your step
Nothing of that kind.
Won't help you help me victimize
The only space that's mine.
See, now I'd put my life on the line
Just to see him trip, frown
And say, "Funny, love, I never saw you slip!"

I say, "My life on the line."
You say, "Man, she's jaded."
I say:
Maybe control's over-rated.

Like when we cackled they called us witches.
Now we don't giggle, they call us bitches.
Well, I'm taking it back,
Fulla hiss,
Cackling loud,
Cackling proud now.

And they're getting nervous
With this kissing-each-other
Scratching their heads,
"What's goin' on, Brother?"
And they yell,
"Feed your husbands, stop feeding the fire!"
And we just cackle
We're a fucking witches' choir!

And we sing:
Sharpen your knives.
Sharpen your daughters.
Steam up the mirrors.
Bake us some dreams.
Cook up some riots.
Fry up some screams.
And when you're sick of your skirts,
Slice open the seams!

'Cuz they want domestics
They'll give you a needle and thread
For patching their egos
We'll sew revolution instead.

And I hear you sayin':
Subtle sister...
Less bite, more bark.
You can make your point without leaving such a mark.
Subtle sister,
Stop your seethin'.
I think we got it.
I think we're even.

Subtle
Like a penis pounding its target.
Subtle
Like your hissing across the street.
Subtle
Like the binding on my sister's feet.
Subtle
Like her belly raped with his semen,
Draped in his fuck,
Funny, doesn't seem even.

You see, sometime's anger's subtle,
Stocked in metaphor,
Full of finesse and dressed in velour.

Sometime's anger's subtle,
Less rage than sad,
Leaking slow through spiggots
You didn't know you had.

And sometimes it's just
Fuck You.
Fuck You.
You see, and to me,
That's poetry, too.


* * *


Eve's Mouth

Eve’s mouth hurts from trying not to laugh
at some joke some scholar made
about her being someone’s half.
It was a joke, a lie,
exaggeration, a fib.
And now you all believe I came
from his rib.

She screams at the top of her lungs:
"I’m whole! I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul."

Well, Queen Victoria gave her daughter some advice
as her daughter shook and trembled on her wedding night.
Queen Victoria, she said to her daughter:
"Baby, lie still and think of the Empire!"
And her husband, though kind and mild,
he never stopped to wonder why she never smiled.

Little Red Riding Hood was walking down the trail,
she was carrying the goodies,
thought "They’ll go stale".
So, she ate ‘em all up and that was that.
Then, she threw them all up, fear of getting fat.
Cause even Red Riding Hood reads magazines,
the ones prescribing diets for pre-teens.

Now, we’ve got Cinderella, she’s chilling at home
quite content with being alone.
She is playing with the mice and singing with the birds and
they’re the only ones who ever heard these words.
She said "I’ll get in the damn pumpkin. Do it all right,
weep and lose my slipper, freak out at midnight.
But there’s one thing that the prince might not like,
it’s the Fairygod I’m after. I’m a dyke."

She screams at the top of her lungs "I’m whole,
I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul"
She screams at the top of her lungs "I’m whole,
I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul."

So we’ve got Snow White, she’s a homemaker of sorts cause she
cleans and she cooks and she takes care of dwarves.
One day, I said "SnowWhite, go back to school".
She said "No, I can’t, I’d feel like a fool.
You know, it’s hard for us women to try to be ourselves,
we spend our whole damn lives taking care of little elves.

Now we’ve got Rapunzel, she’s chilling in the tower,
waiting for the handsome prince
she’s sapped of all her power.
Finally, one day, the handsome prince in town
called up to Rapunzel, "Yo girl, let it down!"
But our dear Rapunzel was nowhere to be seen,
yes our dear Rapunzel had learned something keen.
"All that time alone kinda taught me how to cope,
so I shaved my head and I made me a rope!"

Now, Helen of Troy, they say, launched a thousand ships
with the short of her skirt and the shape of her lips.
And when that old bard lay the blame at her face
for the rape of a nation-
Wrong time. Wrong place.
Helen simply whispered, "history’s our test.
Look between the lines, girls,
Read beneath the text."

She screams at the top of her lungs, "I’m whole,
I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul"
She screams at the top of her lungs, "I’m whole,
I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul"
She screams.


* * *


I Believe

i believe misogyny and patriarchy are closet homo lovers
and they screw over their sisters cause they’re scared to screw each other.
i believe harriet tubman should be on the dollar bill
we’ve had our fill of white boy faces
time to change places.
i believe hilary, not bill, should have worn the crown
they could have learned from jack and jill
which one would break it and fall down.
i believe there are too many
lonely lesbians looking for a lover
and if some would lift their cool masks maybe they would find each other.
i believe people and products both need less packaging
cause bullshit is still bullshit when you pull off all the wrapping.
i believe people are see-through
if you hold em up to the light
i believe people are enlightening
if you plug em in right.
i believe our system is a love affair between the up and upper classes
cause it’s easy to get screwed when you’re just raping all the masses
i believe diet coke is liquid steel
i believe too many women
drink their meal.
i believe in survival of the fittest--
if you’re ranking members of a gym
but if you’re talking about the human club,
you gotta let everybody in.
i believe you should learn more than one language
you should learn to talk in tongues and lips
i believe in nipples and skin and toes and hips.
i believe in noise from teeth and throats
and cunts
the noise of poetry, music,
laughter, after screaming cunnilingus.
i believe women are sexy
without makeup or clothes
i believe women are sexy
when they’re reciting prose
i don’t believe in horoscopes,
fortune, fate, luck, or chance
i believe sometimes shit works out
just cause of circumstance.
so i believe if you call the wrong number
you should talk for a while
you might like em more than
who you meant to dial.
i believe small talk is for small people
who have nothing much to say
if you really think it’s so nice out,
shut up and go enjoy the fucking day
i believe wall street invented
the criminal mentality
the easter bunny laid
mandatory heterosexuality
i believe mutual masturbation makes a lot of sense
i don’t believe in a white picket fence
i believe in picking fights and picketing riot dykes
i believe in loving in groups,
i believe in loving alone.
i believe in hardship, in travelling
through hard shit
then i believe in coming home.
i believe some wives find their husbands boring
and they picture women naked
while those boys are snoring
i believe men need to revolutionize
themselves or they’ll see
all those wives kissing jill sobule and me.
i believe there are more buttons
and more clever bumper stickers every day
and less and less sticking
to what they have to say
more recycling of garbage,
more recycling of cash
it all ends up in the same bin --
with all the white corporate trash.
i believe there are too many babies
and too many weddings and too many headings
that started with Monica
i believe post-gay is presumptious
just plain gay functions.
i don’t believe in ex-gay
i believe trent lott should be b.b. gun-shot
ex-punged from this term before
the thousand years he’s got left
i believe barbie should be used in anatomy class
as a perfect bag of bones
then taken to biogenetics
as an argument against clones.
i believe cell phone culture is ridiculous
imprisoning us in the cell of a social fetish
i believe baby dolls should have realistic clits.
so baby dykes can start getting used to it.
and i believed the guy i waited on today
who said i’m one hundred percent nice
i don’t bite
i said i believe you sir and i’ll take the beer
can you believe i’m one hundred percent queer
and i talk it and i teach it
and i poet and i preach it
and I hold it and I mold it
and I know it so I give it.
cause I’m sure that I believe
i’m still learning how to live it.