Daliah Angelique | this is femininity as taste test

Daliah Angelique is a Pisces moon lesbian and the author of A Dollhouse Built on Brimstone (Black Napkin Press, 2017) and a 2016 Best of Net Anthology nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Spilt Milk, NTCH Mag, Hooligan Magazine, and The Black Napkin.

Daliah Angelique's Website

Also by Daliah Angelique: American Daughter

October 2020

Daliah Angelique

this is femininity as taste test

i am thankless, i am feral i am banned from heaven and the Circle K i quoted family guy at the open mic i prayed for the death of scrappy doo i manifested heatwave and wasp nest i am the Salt Girl born to the Canker Sore Woman, Daughter as visual shorthand for Entrapment, the ensuing resentment, my rabies and all 27 shots to the stomach visual shorthand for rebellion i am running through the bramble now i’m in the bowels of your repulsion curdling milk like fever dream, the morbird girl freak show on the school bus telling the kids stories like some animals eat their young some neglected children become god some mothers never come home and this is not the worst that can happen

Like many other young people struggling with a sordid past, my poetry became mired in gloom and dominated by despair. This poem is a rejection of that quiet, feminized wilting. Instead of swallowing back my grief and making myself palatable, I am embracing my own slanted girlhood. I am honoring my own inner-brat and all the parts of myself that are strange and ragged. That’s what this poem represents for me: the hope and healing in “going feral”.

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