Jessica Mariglio’s Womanifesto:
Womanifesto for the Feminist Adolescent
Womanifesto for the Feminist Adolescent
A realization:
This body
This body is like the land
Susceptible to invasion
occupation, war, and the laws of a foreign government.
Gradually becoming privatized
they’d charge me for every swish of my hips,
If they could.
This body, like the moon, both waxes and wanes
And when the moon glows full with beauty
So do we glow.
It gives us unspeakable power
The lunar parallel in our lives is beyond our control
But more importantly, beyond theirs.
And this mystical phenomenon that blesses and haunts
Is older than we can all remember.
They used to call it witchcraft but
Now I know
It’s just the way things are.
A realization like that
Had me, my mothers, my sisters burnt
at the stake years ago.
Though they’d like me to forget
I cannot
I am still there
Though the flames are invisible and the wood produces no smoke
My body is still firewood,
Fueling a war constant and silent
Pulled between the chains of how things were
How they are
And how they should be
I am still there
Bound to stakes that grow everso high
I am still there
I am still burning
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