This poem is not for you

No matter how badly you want it.
No matter how hard you push and shove, scream, whimper, cajole her for it
She belongs to no man with grabby, grubby fingers

And does not need to be wanted
to validate her worth.

This poem is not for you

No matter how nicely you ask for it.
She does not bow to propriety

or stoop for convention.

She does not thrive on the glistening droplets of sweetness you

deign to spare for her
between the largesse of your “earned” affections.

This poem is not for you

And it never will be.
No matter how powerful the law of the land
She does not live for you, open to you, spread herself upon your table

like a feast for the stomach you’d satisfy with any old meat

cast on the floor of your castle

with the rest of the trash.

This poem is not for you

And you’re going to have to get used to that
Because women, we’re stronger than you thought

And in case you didn’t notice
You don’t hold your power between your quaking legs.

We do.

“Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?”

Ophelia, honestly

Your honesty never mattered.
Because as soon as you emerged
wailing
pink
[and beautiful]
into the world

For the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.

Except there is no transformation where beauty is concerned, because we are all just painted faces regardless of what lies between our ears, our legs, between our two arms and sides of skin. The skin is what matters, and so beauty has no likeness.

We are all our own meat suits, unless we can scream loudly enough to cajole public opinion to tell us otherwise.

This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.

There’s beauty in bereavement, in crow flowers, nettles, daisies, long purples dragging phallic by your corpse. We prefer our women dead, make icons of Ophelia with her nipples showing in the Louvre. A lady’s sexy when she’s wet.

As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element

We’re socialized blind to our own iniquity. It’s our female lot in life. Wait for our Prince Charmings, sighing, sleeping in glass coffins, towers, castles. Voiceless, breathless, fatherless we need a man to bring us back to life.

Ophelia, dear drowned sister:

We are all the more deceived.

Lizz Schumer is a writer, journalist, and photographer who lives and works in Buffalo, NY. Her writing generally deals with the interplay between the personal and universal, including themes that address religion, geo-politics, and family as they relate to an individual’s sense of self. Lizz’s first book, “Buffalo Steel” came out in 2013 and her personal essays, poetry, and hybrid text can be found in Manifest-Station, Minerva Rising, Connotation Press, Punchnel’s, Salon, and many others. She can be found online at lizzschumer.com.