ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Rachel Wiley is a queer, biracial poet from Columbus, Ohio. She is a faculty member of the annual Pink Door Writing Retreat in Rochester, NY. Her recent collection, Nothing is Okay, was published in March 2018 by Button Poetry and spent time as Amazon’s #1 Gay & Lesbian Poetry Collection.
Femme Fatale
His
first
mistake
is assuming
anything I do
is done for male
consumption, for his
consumption. I put my
face on artful every morn-
ing.My time in front of the mirror
getting it just right might appear a
shallow act. He might assume that I
am the one distracted and he is not. He
might assume my walk-in closet is a temple
of vanity and not a war room when it is both. My
eyeliner stays winged so sharp it could kill a man. If
I allow him near enough to embrace me It is only to fur-
ther sharpen the blade against the rough of his cheek. He
might assume that I am soft that I am unarmed. I am soft, lush-
ly so, I am also always armed and patiently waiting for the inevitable
moment he passes out on my soft, on his own toxicity, before I bleed him out.
This poem is a response to the common misconception that femmeness exists in some way to serve masculinity. While some traditionally femme practices — like putting on makeup — may have initially come from patriarchal beauty standards they do actually belong to the hand that wields the eyeliner pen and like most marginalized groups we have learned to queer and weaponize things once pressed on or expected of us into tools of our own liberation.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
