the female body
titillates you
humiliates you
but most of all, it horrifies you
breasts, unasked for,
appearing untimely
and un-underwired,
are cause for fear
when they don’t disappear
under the fog of your
objectifying desire
birth and menstruation
scare you. blood. too much blood
blood you want to shed and own
but blood flowing freely, out of line,
blood in no mood to be contained
blood that will not be managed
and erased or soaked
horrifies you so you try
to tame its femininity
with your masculine name
you give her blood
your name
a single woman with
a child intimidates you
more than a war mongering man
sending millions to their graves
a life saved outside of the normative
dismays you more than one
slain at the altar of patriarchy,
a woman must be rightly accompanied
a woman must be rightly occupied,
reproduction is her task
her rights over her body must be denied,
whether she is giving birth
or not, she must be infantalised
from her own self, kept aside,
a mother who knows
what she would do
bothers you
at parties, in classrooms, in queues
anywhere this un-body appears
it un-bones you
how did she dare mix labour with love
and when she could be sexy,
do the hetero thing,
mothering non-threatening
why does she deviate by singling?
why does her haircut expose the nape?
how does a whore file for rape?
the female body
when covered, not covered
slightly covered, forgets covers
intimidates you
so you compensate
your fears in the language of
consumption, you try and fix
that body by wanting
or not wanting her
to have lived so far
from the truth,
have wrapped yourself
tight in the flag of falsity
burrowed so deep into
the cave of masculine make belief,
living by the lies of self-origination
and women’s self-objectification
and other codes of abiding hypocrisy,
having drawn the borders
of families and nations
by contorting, stretching,
manning this body
even a single flash of the real,
a woman living in, through, out of,
her own body, say,
wearing a burka at the beach
undoes you; that woman who says “no”
refuses to fall neatly into your
binaryculars of want/not-want
scares the living daylights
out of your fragile mandom
for that body is not
your ‘nude’
not the one you remember
from the airport magazine
or the studio table
that body appears instead
as the ghost of all your
murdered truths