Suns Out Guns Out
by Kathryn Novelli

Earth embracing full tilt at aphelion,
summer swelters streets heat skin slickens skirts shorter sleeves slimmer
and I have been cultivating the urban jungle housed in my pits
preparing the proverbial lougie of defiance to hawk and flipping four thousand flocks of birds your way,
I am wrecking ball with bic pen.
I’m sweating this.
Can you smell it?
I know you want me.
I want you to know me.
My tendrils are reaching for you.
I want you to smell every follicle, sniff each individual strand of fuck you, groomed for sport and spite,
tell me, do you still think I’m pretty?
And damn, how I hope to high heaven and hot hell that you don’t.
When you stare
I want you to feel the fuck you fury directed to the horn honks,
the construction workers,
the bandanna shoved in the condom left on my doorstep,
the men who asked if I, not the restaurant was open after hours,
Laughed behind glass while I smiled back, swept floor,
the boy who wouldn’t let go of me even when I started crying, laid still.
Fuck you to the corporate created insecurities set in place to double the profit margin,
didn’t start marketing razors to women til the 20’s,
the same way they convinced you to strap on the stilettos so you couldn’t run away.
Fuck you to the shame they ascribed to the natural state,
the degradation of the self,
the prevalence of Photoshop,
this is personal.
Does the consumer know what they are buying?
Do they know what they are buying into?
Tell me, when did they indoctrinate you?
The hairs get darker every day.
I flex my biceps to let every rat bastard
in every dark alley, every sunny sidewalk, every crevice of every brain
know I can be just as putrid as you.
Do not yell at me.
Do not call me baby.
Not me, not anyone else.
I hope this stench sticks forever.
I hope it stains your nostrils.
I hope you feel it on your tongue when you spit your hate speech.
I hope you are scared.
I need you to feel more scared than me.
Please.