You Fit Into Me - Margaret Atwood

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

-Margaret Atwood

Sandra Cisneros "Loose Woman"

They say I'm a beast.

And feast on it. When all along

I though that's what a woman was.

They say I'm a bitch.

Or witch. I've claimed

the same and never winced.

They say I'm a macha, hell on wheels,

viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,

man-hating, devastating,

boogey-woman lesbian.

Not necessarily,

but I like the compliment.

The mob arrives with stones and sticks

to maim and lame and do me in.

All the same, when I open my mouth,

they wobble like gin.

Diamonds and pearls 

tumble from my tongue.

Or toads and serpents.

Depending on the mood I'm in.

I like the itch I provoke.

The rustle of rumor

like crinoline.

I am the woman of myth and bullshit.

(True. I authored some of it.)

I built my little house of ill repute.

Brick by brick. Labored,

loved and masoned it.

I live like so.

Heart as sail, ballast, rudder, bow.

Rowdy. Indulgent to excess.

My sin and success--

I think of me to gluttony.

By all accounts I am

a danger to society.

I'm Pancha Villa.

I break laws,

upset the natural order,

anguish the Pope and make fathers cry.

I am beyond the jaw of law.

I'm la desperada, most wanted public enemy.

My happy picture grinning from the wall.

I strike terror among the men.

I can't be bothered what they think.

¡Que se vayan a la ching chang chong!

For this, the cross, the Calvary.

In other words, I'm anarchy.

I'm an aim-well,

shoot-sharp,

sharp-tongued,

sharp-thinking,

fast-speaking,

foot-loose,

loose-tongued,

let-loose,

woman-on-the-loose

loose woman.

Beware, honey.

I'm Bitch. Beast. Macha.

¡Wachale!

Ping! Ping! Ping!

I break things.

-Sandra Cisneros

"From the same desert, in the same night, always my tired eyes awake to the silver star, always, but the Kings of life are not moved, the three magi, mind and heart and soul."
- Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

"A stranger stabs you in the front; a friend stabs you in the back; a boyfriend stabs you in the heart, but best friends only poke each other with straws." - Unknown

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” - Sylvia Plath

Through joy and through sorrow,  I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. - Edgar A. Poe

"As crooked as a ram's horns."