girlhood

they make a receptacle of pins —

pale proxy still proximate to him, palmist

whom they proffer pathology (absent

middle finger valleys mean they’re ruthless)

these cunning folk he sends away, to your

village, though you’re allowed to stay behind

stone parapets in plaits, a veil demure,

a pupil with a higher left heart line

deemed pure. Sequestered, then you feel the sting,

the first of countless cuts. No one is there

besides the chiromancer, your shrieking.

He asks if one of them did braid your hair.

It was the elder, her ominous palms recalled.

You were once girl they make a voodoo doll.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of fourteen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), the forthcoming Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), The Meadow (APEP Publications) and Shut Your Eyes, Succubi (Maverick Duck). Follow her on Twitter: (@lolaandjolie) and her website http://kristingarth.com

I WILL SURVIVE

Where I come from, they still bury girls alive. Yet my father went and gave methai, sweet fat-fattening nourishment, to everyone he knew when he found out his first born was a girl. Then came the reality of teaching his girl how to make it as a female in a culture where older men, sometimes even in one’s own family, grab-a-feel of a prepubescent girl if they so choose. The easiest remedy was to turn me into a boy. I can’t recall if my wearing shorts, no make-up, very short hair came from a desire to be like one of the boys or to survive. I learned to curse very young and I trusted no one for a very long time. I learned to be the sun that can rot you from my father; I learned to be a woman who knows the man in the moon from my mother.
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“You Were Once Girl” by Kristin Garth

Exile is a Fire No One Can Put Out by Annie Q. Syed

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