A year ago, I was also thinking a lot about inertia, and for longer than that, I’ve been thinking about the way beautiful things deserve to show through ugly things. Then, it felt like we were only being shown ugly things. So I started viewing anger as beautiful; at first I just sought it out to soothe myself, then I sought to share it.
A year ago, I regretted not being vocal enough, public enough, about my unwavering support of women. Inspired by Darcie Wilder’s beautiful, reckoning poem, “Everything Is Dumb Now,” I decided to publish an anthology and donate the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. I started asking the wonderful women writers I knew if they’d be interested in contributing. “What are you looking for?” they asked. “Anything angry,” I replied, “I want the anthology to coalesce around anger.”
I didn’t have a title at first, but as the months wore on, I found myself waking up with pain in my jaw. “It’s going to be called Through Clenched Teeth,” I told Mira Gonzalez, whose amazing illustrative work is on the cover. She started showing me doodles of incisors. As the year passed, and as more women agreed to contribute, we all watched the discourse change, and change again, in ways we had previously only wildly hoped for.
Leslie Jamison recently said, “For years, I described myself as someone who wasn’t prone to anger.” She’d get sad instead. But I’ve always been prone to anger, and now it feels like I’m allowed. I hope more people see this transition as important as it is; I hope lyrical anger can start to comfort and empower the people who have shied away from it. I hope next year we’re taking solace in change.
– Monika Woods
Through Clenched Teeth will celebrate its launch on January 29th and is available for pre-order now.
__________________________________
How To Keep It Together
Sarah Jean Alexander
You can’t casually tell me that you’ve given up if you
don’t expect me to smother you with the entirety of my
similarly exhausting helplessness in an effort to radiate
some type of comforting mutual existence, cocooning
us both until I don’t know what. I want to tell you that
most days I feel incapable of not holding onto other
people’s pain, I’m sorry. It’s hard to write anything
down anymore without somehow straining every
muscle in my face. Underneath every callus I own is a
pulsing, undead baby blister. I try to cut through to its
juice, and somehow you reach it first. Everything new
to me is only a previously unrealized experience oh
my god. The selfishness I live in.
Tattoo HOW TO KEEP IT TOGETHER across my
forehead in bold ink, and then press it against yours.
When it is warm, imagine what I am like in the sun. I
want to tell you that when everything suddenly seems
impossible, please remember: April 24th, 2016. your
words mirroring mine. your face shining
with a glow I cannot understand. and that inside you is
me, somehow —
__________________________________
(but if a little venom spits out)
Lauren Hunter
While my whole life
has been a singular question
asking permission for
each next breath
(not too deep so as
not to offend anyone)
or allow any comfort
on my own behalf,
i realized that those
motherfuckers
don’t have the decency to hide
their hate because there’s no consequence
to their “unpopular opinion—”
no one to make them feel
small and unsafe
no matter where they go or
what they do.
What i need you to know is
that every step i take in public
is the bravest thing
i have ever done.
Every spin
on a dance floor
is a war between
what knows you’ll kill me
and what truly loves
this song. What breaks
my heart is knowing
i’m the only champion i get
in my defense, and i’m not
strong enough on my own. The war
isn’t only with the enemy i expect—
yet somehow i have to win this.
Or die trying.
__________________________________
Abeg
Precious Okoyomon
my mother got married for a greencard
I mean we’re living thru some shit
big fat pussy clouds / violent season
my mouth is full of colonial regret
i am my mother’s daughter
do
i ever get tired of punishing myself > nah son
all these bitches is my sons
deified oppression
clenched teeth
I’m leaking everywhere
ain’t my shit sexy
this is what my mother immigrated for
dreams of waking up / eating ur own tongue
i mean wading thru this memory is going to require some bullshit
under the glare of this dimly lit bathroom
snorting coke with this white boi
off this flooding toilet
my flesh in purgatory
new interdependence
I mean my ancestors seem confused
I mean this is the caucasian dream
I am big and round and ready
I mean my lil dark body is twitching
violent symmetry
I am unliving my mother
fed up with my making
I address my prayer to myself
body on it’s knees
/ without memory /betraying body / unearthing light
begin erasure
nothing to write home about
