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Nov 15, 2022

Rukopis+ 6

Workshop

Poems

Rebecca Krajcova

Expiration date




it is truly evil how the patriarchy weaponised aging

and by measuring a woman’s

worth by her beauty

and her beauty by her worth

essentially ensured that even

the most powerful of women

will lose that power in time.


We get fed this idea that “men get better with age”

mature men are sexy

men get salt and pepper

meanwhile

women are only allowed to age if done so gracefully

the societal pressure for women to remain hairless

essentially mimicking the likeness of someone who’s

prepubescent.


the most searched term in pornography is teen

there are only 2 years in a woman’s life

where she should be engaging

hopefully

consensually


in the production of pornography as a teen

18 and 19


i want you to sit and think about the societal impact

that this has on both

men and women


there’s just something so incredible twisted

that the thing that holds the most societal value for a woman

her beauty

is given an expiration date




Girlhood




being a girl is a blessing and a curse

it’s dotting your i’s with hearts,

it’s tying ribbons in your hair,

it’s sharing your favorite lipgloss.

It’s

to cycle with the moon

to lay in bed midday

to dance in the mirror

to cry in the mirror

to welcome hurt in the pursuit of beauty

to carry your mothers pain

to empathize with the abuser


apologizing

forgiving

starving


to cling to hope

to blame yourself

to keep birthday cards

to shrink

to be held


to leave coins at the bottom of your purse

to overwater your plants

to leave lipstick marks on everything you kiss

to hide your ears under your hair


to brush her hair out of her face

to spin around in frilly dresses


it’s


to find meaning in everything

to make sense of nothing.




ch/p ch/p ch/p




Little Tony, little Timmy, whoever you want to call him, his name doesn’t matter. Neither does the splinter, chip, sliver it all starts with.

What does matter is that Timmy was a very, very, naughty boy.

He lived with his family in a little chateau in a rural part of New England.

His family consisted of his younger brother Evan, his mother and his father.

Evan and Tony’s relationship was okay.

They spent more time together than they ever did with their parents.

His parents were very busy, working in the city from dusk till dawn, doing god knows what.

God knew, though.

So little Evan and Timmy had all the freedom two young boys would dream of,

but they were not alone.

Their family owned a lot of maids

cough cough

slaves

Marrie was the head of the kitchen, and her two daughters Lizzie and Beatrice took care of the house and taught the boys.


But why was little Tony a bad boy?

It started out small,

it always does

First it was stealing his brother’s food, which Evan did not mind, he loved and looked up to his older brother, as younger siblings do.

Then he realized, hurting his little brother would not go unnoticed, he would always get scolded by the maids

so

he started tormenting the farm animals

tying the tails of two of the house cats

throwing freshly laid eggs

riding on sheep

drowning two dogs in puddles of water

breaking the chickens legs

nature also didn’t go unnoticed

he burned household plants

carved obscenities into hundred year old trees

broke every branch he could find

jumped on the pile of rocks he found a few feet behind the house with crosses on them

where Marianne and her two daughter would weep


everything that timmy could get his stinky little hands on, he punished.

Punished he felt.

He felt this way too, on one unimportant day in November.

He was throwing around one of the old wooden toys that he had been given to by Beatrice,

when all of a sudden he yelled

“OUCH!”

oh

a little wooden

chip

entered under his little fingernails, rapidly

a finger of a small colonizer, was now a part of this ancient wooden toy

no one cared

he continued with whatever he was doing, some hours went by and he begins to feel his finger going numb, numb like he thought all the animals and trees were when he hurt them

he didn’t know this feeling, at all.

The feeling of numbness continued throughout his whole hand, he got so angry he hit his hand onto the fire place

he was shocked

it sounded like

wood?

he felt nothing, he just heard the sound of wood, he could not explain it.

Tony started to hear things he never heard before, he heard the animals talking back to him, he heard the rock he was kicking shouting vulgarities back at him, he heard the trees whispering.

“I’ve gone mad”, he thought. No one noticed,but his little brother Evan.

He noticed right away, just didn’t say anything, he was as confused as Timmy but he knew sooner or later it would be over.

that night it was raining, thunderstorms and fog

it was almost dinner time when little timmy couldn’t hold it in anymore

he opened the back door and sprinted out to the garden with a blood curdling scream

Evan slowly hid behind the door and watched it all unfold

Tony screamed like the cat he tortured two weeks ago,

screams of agony, screams of a son of god turning into a tree

branches started sprouting out of his little fingernails, his face turned green as he saw his feet becoming roots and he became one with the earth.

He choked on leaves, and at last his skin turned into a brown crust.

Evan saw the entire transformation unfold right in front of his eyes when Beatrice grabbed him by the hand and said

“oh your parents aren’t gonna like this one, they will tear that tree down the first thing in the morning”

and so they did.

Timmy was never searched for, never found.

Some say he turned into a tree

but that’s absurd

Right?

Rebecca Krajcova

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