I feel most female when I’m walking home alone at night. I feel most female when I’m told not to walk alone. I feel most female when I carry mace when I carry a whistle when I carry a purse with my own hand tucked inside, my knuckles clenching the sharpest of my keys. I feel most female in my own home, using power tools to drill through century-old walls, I feel most female on a run to the hardware store, when I do not ask for help when I choose my own diamond-edge bit sharp enough for any brick. I feel most female when I can’t reach the top shelf, can’t open the salsa, can’t untwist the coffee pot and laugh it off— you have a great laugh someone will say. I feel most female on my first date repeating in my head my mom’s advice if he touches you somewhere you don’t like just hold his hand. I feel most female holding a camera holding a paintbrush a book, a pen. I feel most female when I am in the background when I am in the foreground when I am in the studio like Degas’ dancers, dressed from bun to pointed toe in tulle, when my pink body is thrown into the air and only the ground can catch me. I feel most female at the bar, at the bus stop, sitting, standing in front of the classroom, in front of a mirror, in line and waiting to check out at the grocery store. The most female thing I ever did, if you ask my niece, was flip off those two men who catcalled us walking down the street. I feel most female when I follow the rules, when I follow the leader, play clapping games, jump rope, line up for gym class, come home after school. Most female when I read Hurston, when I read Hegel, when I am dialectically gendered, canonically divided into two. When I come home, when I go to sleep, when I wake up and the president is a rapist and a racist and fifty-three percent of women like me lined up at a ballot booth and asked for it. I feel most female when I’m angry, when I’m sad, when I’m ashamed of it. I feel most female when I am the subject. I feel most female when I am the object. When I replace the word woman with female on a student’s paper to make it feel grammatically correct. When I write the word perhaps perhaps because even my language knows to doubt me. Forms: femaal femaille femaal femawle femayll femel ffemale femmall faemale feymel femill famaal foemal I feel most female far away from home, at night with a single match lighting a fire and placing a grill above the coals. I feel most female coming home. I feel most female coming home.

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.