GIRLHOOD IS A BLOODSPORT

Girlhood is a bloodsport, make no mistake. Make one mistake & you’re dead, or you wish you were, or you try to be, or you pretend to be, because it’s quieter. You don’t want to know.

♢

The guys get all the good parts at synagogue. But they say that’s because a woman is born holy. If you’re born holy you already know everything there is to know about God. I’m telling you, God is not lovely. God is intolerable—crescendo without climax. God’s mercy: that you know nothing of God.

♢

In Mexico, fire-coloured butterflies cover the oyamel trees. A white man can “discover” something everybody else has known forever: the violence of little girls, the unbearableness of God, a forest full of wings . . .
 
 
 
Maya Owen will never get over the Library of Alexandria. Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in publications including The Electronic Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, Leveler, Little River, Melancholy Hyperbole, voicemailpoems, Electric Cereal, and Alexandria Quarterly.