HOOKER POEM (what is the sound of one hand reaching out)

every time I try to name my losses the sound is drowned out by the pecking window rain of a thousand chattering feminists · will you please shut the fuck up so I can hear my own heartbeat and reach carefully into my deficiencies · please step aside so I can see what’s hiding at the ends of the roads I have to choose between · and MOVE your fat averagefaces melting with decades of no pain hundreds of proud rejections sitting on a throne of satiated childhood · move your gazes out of my way so I can contemplate the thousand outstretched arms before me to choose the pair that won’t drag me screaming into neverreceding night · grandmother what long arms you have · all the better to liberate you with my child · grandmother what little understanding you have · all the better to build a society with · out of you and three thousand other confiscated bodies · empathy halts progress with its shrill screaming ants blocking our freeway to freedom · money’s comforting arms and feeding hands must be hidden away in the treasure chests of happy hearts as if someone might steal it from us through our cheating husbands · maybe you little hooker maybe precisely your starving heart on a street corner will pirate the man’s resources · better to hasten your disaster throw you away like a broken barbie doll · (which by the way is totally unrealistic real women don’t look like that real hearts don’t beat that fast) · better to sacrifice you to the garbage men than risk being infected with unhappy childhood or developing countries · here is a cry for help like a circumcised vocal cord in the silence · here are all the wrong problems and all the wrong solutions in a jumble of humorblack puzzle pieces · a woman forming a different image than the one on the box · I don’t want to hear your whining about minimum wage · inflexible job market · depression · anxiety · carpal tunnel syndrome · jacks-in-offices like avenging angels with unexplained grudges guarding the gates of heaven from · for example · people like little you · don’t give me your problems if they don’t solve mine · have a problem with the solution you’ve chosen for yourself · lose your respect for yourself · for your expertise in your own life · become the story we tell with the full force of fully functioning lungs · or GTFO in the rain with your red umbrella

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