alamo alamo
i
“Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement”, Fra Filippo Lippi, ca. 1440, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fiction

alamo

Magdalena Gałkowska
Reading
time 1 minute

“I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night.”
The Cure

 

she gave up long ago. you’ll know her by a few
broken nails, hair ripped from her head on the brush,
bruised knuckles and smashed remains
of plates. she didn’t know that not desiring

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was enough to get free, that even a chink
in the wall would let in some light, remind her
the air was fit to breathe. she could take it in,
let it out. only recently she began chipping away

at her base, touching up her lashes and her flaws.
And also her lips, a chilly shade of pink, the scar
above her right eye. when she looks in the mirror,
she sees someone fighting for independence.

 

Author’s note:

A personal declaration of independence, probably the most feminist poem I’ve written to date. The famous call to battle at the Alamo has resonance today: “Remember me!” or even “Remember us!” – as speakers of lyric poems, but more importantly as subjects.

 

 

Also read:

it’s only sunday it’s only sunday
Experiences

it’s only sunday

Antonina Małgorzata Tosiek

why you crying stupid
it’s okay now
those are your Sunday rules
that you kill the rooster come on
is this your first time on a farm
that you’re so shocked stop shaking
coz you’ll miss and then you gotta pluck
head on the block and then the axe

you won’t cut it off?
give it to me I’ll do it

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