E. Kristin Anderson | Raiding | Poets Resist

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Kristin is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), and 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and a slush reader at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker.

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Also by E. Kristin Anderson: 17 seventeen XVII Fire in the Sky She Witnesses: Found Poems 17 Days Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night A Guide for the Practical Abductee A Jab of Deep Urgency

Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: This Is How I Am A Monster

Poets Resist
Edited by Rachel Bunting
April 17, 2018

E. Kristin Anderson

Raiding

I know how this goes. Please, let me step aside so your goons can unravel red tape around my crime scene. Here: a vulva. Here: my ova. Here: twenty years of undiagnosed menorrhagia. Come, come for my breasts, the susurration of slut marking the taught flesh over my sternum, the midnight migraine as I lay anxious in the dark. I’ve met your hands and I do not like them — hard flesh painting me as Fat Barbie, Sad Barbie, Whore Barbie, Barbie in the doctor’s office (again) explaining, no, you don’t get to diagnose hysteria and live to tell. I am red-headed Vengeance Barbie — I am Barbie who can stand upright with two feet who sits alone at home in her cluttered apartment plotting your demise. Here is where I let you touch me. Just kidding. Get the fuck out. You aren’t invited. You marvel at the flesh suit of a woman that somehow contains autonomy, almost as if I am an actual person. You’re coming for my pills and I’m coming for your life. You’re coming for my pussy and I’m coming for your job. Excuse me, but no, I get to say pussy. Pussy! Just like that. You get to say yes, ma’am and thank you, ma’am and please enjoy your civil rights ma’am because this is a motherfucking raid and I hate (relish) being the one to tell you this but, goddamn, I am legion and you are so utterly fucked.