Sit like a woman!
Cross your goddamned legs.
Don’t show nothing.
Sit still like a woman.
You didn’t fight for this:
The thick branches of independence,
A woman’s right to make 30% less,
Suffrage a hole to punch on a fucking ballot,
Diet commercials screaming on TV,
Almost-nothing sweeteners disappearing before your very eyes,
First woman President ALMOST makes it,
Lifetime TV movie telegraphs,
“Band Of Gold” sung on Karaoke night,
Capri thin cigarettes in pretty pink packs,
A diamond is a girl’s worst friend,
And then it ends.
There are heroes & there are heroines.
People who win, people who make it first.
A woman who worked two jobs until the dead of night
To pay for those new red & black Nike Air shoes
You hit the court with only three times last year.
There’s blood coursing through this history.
I said it once to you, sit like a woman!
Pull that skirt down.
Speak only when spoken to.
Let him order for you.
There’s no blood coursing through this history.
I was raised by a woman day-to-day alone.
Supposed to make me soft, supposed to make me shallow.
Instead, it made me empathetic to the single solitary
First time reason I am out here shouting against all of this.
I saw that bullshit look he gave you.
Scared that having you look too pretty
Might make him look like too much of a dick.
You let him take you home in that brand-new black Mercedes hard-top
Playing that Al Green CD he bought K-Tel special
And he probably tried to make you give it up in the backseat out on Mulholland Drive.
Sit like a WOMAN!
Means sit down. Means sit on it.
Sit somewhere anywhere other than here.
Don’t let someone passing by see between your legs.
Your g-string & everything else in the low-light tunnel up there.
I’m sick of every single thing that this choke holds back.
No v-neck sweaters, too short skirts, fallow make up
That make you look like the dead walking.
Sit like a woman!
Don’t sit here. Don’t sit here. Don’t stay here.
© Adam Bresson
Tagged choke, mother, poetry, president, sweater, woman