here are my best ideas / set down / more touch / more

consensual touch / communal living / assertiveness

 

training / save the men too not just women &children

 

because patriarchy putting the power of my love-losing

wishes beneath men’s wishes / is wrong / complete

 

integration mission / talk about death in accurate

 

descriptive non-hyperbolic terms / don’t force women to

have babies / to not have babies / women shouldn’t die in

 

childbirth / hospitals should not overbook to maximize

 

profit at the expense of lives / more women die in

childbirth / more black women die in childbirth / this

 

is not god’s will / more women die in childbirth / this is

 

wrong / more women die in childbirth in this country than

they did thirty years ago shame / shame / shame / shame

 

&shame on this sick man who shot me down / shame

 

shame / i wish i stayed home the day i will be shot / shame

on this society that broke and divided this man / his

 

emotional life ripped in pieces in exchange for the honor

 

of one day being called man &the promise of all that he is

owed / which is a lie / this broken man that will shoot me

 

down / our system is structured to turn our back / i would

 

rather sit with this broken man / &hug this broken man

listen to this broken man / &care tenderly for this broken

 

man / than have him shoot &kill me / or you / if that’s what

 

it bloody well takes / i will roll my gingham stiff sleeves

up &do more thankless intellectual &emotional &invisible

 

women’s work except visible because / set down here.

***

Zoe Canner is an angry, anti-racist, 3^rd Generation Holocaust Survivor. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in SUSAN / The Journal, Chicago Review of Books’ Arcturus, Storm Cellar, Occulum, Indolent Books’ What Rough Beast, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles where she indulges in hilly walks at dusk when the night-blooming jasmine is at its peak fragrance.