There are scaled beasts inside me,
all fighting for who gets the biggest bite—
the largest chunk of my anger/frustration/disgust.
They are parasites, feeding on my turbulent
emotion.

I bleed internally and wither externally.
Can you see the chinks where my bones shine through?

These animals, they have forked teeth and
empty spaces where compassion once grew.
No more.
Malignant lizards feed on my rage but their
tenderness is no more.

I am broken apart, breaking.
Come and watch these scavengers fight over my carcass
from the inside out.

"for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us,      amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men."

Lucille Clifton, from “sorrow song”

ice castles do not melt without sunlight,
and the ice king will not loose his whores.
—we are whores.
our skin is brittle and falls off in flakes, frozen
   but not dead. 
our heartbeat is slow but not gone.
our desire for sexual freedom will never break.

but we are trapped beneath the ice, and
the sun is trapped with us.

liberation is a long time coming—the ice king is strong.

"The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky."

Kat Rosenfield, Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone

steam engines sing
fractured songs while
you lie broken and bloody beneath
the wheel.
pink heat — hot hot
hot — it became too much,
and your fractured singing went
silent. still. 

now i am alone and now your body
is a specter that waits behind my shower curtain.
the steam engines keep on singing.

but i am burning up — hot hot hot.

via Dear Author:

While slut shaming is a common theme in category novels, it is really a staple trope in the entire genre.  How many times have we read about the hero believing the heroine to be a shameless whore only to be shocked and delighted when she is a virgin?  Her virginity is the proof against his baseless accusations.  Without her virginity, the hero could go on believing she is every awful thing that he ever imagined her to be.

"I know a few things about ghosts. The only way to stop them getting inside you is to spend every second of the day thinking about something else. Fighting like that makes you tired, and it doesn’t matter how hard you fight anyway. They chip till they make a crack, and before you know it there’s a ghost squatter in your living room. It’s hard to get them out. Hard because they settle in. Hard because you like the company."

Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song

Come out into the heathen moon shadows,
glide through the iron-tinted blume. 
The birch trees are white, angel white, but we—
we are black and we are not afraid of cruel stars. 
We are pagans, and we have never lost the Eden secret
of being naked and unashamed.

Dance across fairylit ashes and remember,
don’t forget that once we wished on troubled moons.
The snow is burning cold beneath our black bodies and
sin glimmers in the creases of our nakedness.

Our child will be dark as an unfelt dawn,
her smile will be wide and full of secrets.
She will dance with us beneath angel birches;
pagan song will rise.

Come out and play, little boy.
Do not fear the ghosts.