I don’t know your name, little girl, but I do know that I owe you an apology. I would have given you one in person, but I was feeling too ashamed. Do you know this word, shame? I hope you don’t. I hope you never do.
Read MoreOn Taking Up Space & Performing Our Pain
My pain was on display, loud and ready for anyone to view it. In my quest to become bigger, I’d become pain performed. I’d become voiceless and small. Infinitesimally, microscopically, impossibly small.
Read MoreThis Is Your Hands Around Your Thigh
This is the girl who won’t eat a doughnut who won’t eat a hamburger bun. This is the little girl who doesn’t gain weight for two years I’m worried about you her mother says. This is the girl skinning the cat on the old clothesline the rusted cross poles. This means that her body is light is fit is tight an unthought-of thing it moves and prances it loves to be tickled. It lifts itself up into trees. It runs across the pasture its mother washes it and bathes it and lays out its clothes. It argues with Angela on the playground who is the fattest I am I am fatter than you it bunches up its thigh and shouts no, no, I am fatter than you.
Read MoreReview of Natalie Eilbert's 'AND I SHALL AGAIN BE VIRTUOUS'
I have a huge crush on Natalie Eilbert. It's hard not to have a crush on Natalie Eilbert when she writes such raw yet tightly-knit poems that push my heart into oblivion, because it was demolished by an ocean of words. Her chapbook, AND I SHALL AGAIN BE VIRTUOUS (Big Lucks Books), was recently published, and rightly so: the world needs to hear the outrage of women, and they need to hear it right now.
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