"Feminine Rage: Welcome to Hell" by Charlie Kahner Enderby

Charlie Kahner Enderby is an Oklahoma-born and raised poet whose poetry focuses on her own experiences as a queer femme person living in the Bible Belt.

i wanna punch a nazi

break his nose as tiki torches

set his home ablaze

in the middle of the night

with no one to hear his cries for help

i wanna vandalize the homes of every

stuck up, half-wit daddy's money politician

who thinks he has any autonomy over my body

i’ll leave trash cans full of bloody

pads and tampons on his million-dollar lawn

letting it sit overnight and stink under the shining sun

i wanna pull a knife on every dude that catcalls me and watch the fear of god enter his eyes as his life is in the hands of a 5 foot two redhead whose skirt is a little too short and is too fucking mad to care about jail time

fuck being nice fuck peaceful protests

none of that shit has worked

we’re still getting discriminated against

we’re still being raped

we’re still being murdered

it doesn’t matter if it’s here if it’s there

it’s fucking everywhere

It's the hell we live through every day

the way that we all avoid being alone with that one

coworker/uncle/family-friend/student/teacher/principal/administrator/coach

because who knows what his real intentions are

those things our mothers have silently warned us about

since we first began to develop from

the physical “girl” into the physical “woman”

even though we still play with our American Girl dolls

and are afraid to even look at a tampon

because ready or not, it's here.

April 16, 2023.