From ‘outside voices, please’

From ‘outside voices, please’

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I grew drunk on the dragonflies’ ultra
Three times I asked our misogynistic uncle, the
family patriarch, for money for books for the girls
to which he then scoffed drunkenly throwing coins onto
our heads onto the floor chuckling amused at his own godlike generosity
I learned to read via occupational hazard manuals
I woke up from a coma believing that I was a witch with polio
I needed you so badly I thought I would die
I told mama about cousin wincing while he peed outside
All of my curiosities ceased breaking down to the
one sum the one test whether I could keep calm while I was
drummed I was ripped off again and again and again I was
featured in revenge porn after revenge porn after revenge
porn I was deciding whether to reconcile with his enabler
because in that moment I was what my friend called completely unconscious and incapable
of consent As I sat along the Mississippi River in another life which is not the
same life no it is not the same life as the one I have come to grow
love inside like a stone birth Everybody talked and talked and talked about how
good a rapist he was right, how good a rapist a classic glass Coca Cola bottle
could be was, right Meanwhile hadn’t heard one word about what
saved her acutely patented life what cast out the canker out from within her Meanwhile
not one word about the dark sky not one word more than
the mean or the average or the outlier of it I admit it’s actually something very hard
to penetrate It’s actually something which will engulf us all incapacitate it’s not even
the Christian right or the fossil fuels of America it’s actually
It’s actually probably the only thing that the Christian right or the fossil fuels
of America have ever been would ever truly be or have been afraid of
I’ve called the minute men, they are on their way

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Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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