Tag: empowerment

Young Lady Auto Mechanics 1927 by M. Nasorri Pavone

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Young Lady Auto Mechanics 1927

        From a vintage photo of high school girls in shop class

Were we brazen or that curious?
We were certainly teased
for putting our hands at risk.

Anyone with a beef about it
blamed the school for our folly.
But what if we didn’t grow out

of our interests? We guessed why
we had to read The Scarlet Letter.
We learned what was expected.

Some killjoy compared us to Eve
with the snake rolling out
an auto-size apple.

From where you sit we look
as united as an all-girl garage band
posing for an album cover,

our blunt bobs, our Mary Janes
beneath our rolled up cover-all cuffs.
The boys called us degenerates.

So? What we’ll never know is
how you came to love us in a way
we’ll never get to share.

At left there’s me, Grace Hurd. That’s
Evelyn Harrison, Corinna DiGiulian,
and Grace Wagner under the car

at Central High in Washington D.C.
We weren’t kidding. We got in there,
got greasy, made that engine sing.

*

M. Nasorri Pavone’s poetry has appeared in River Styx, One, b o d y, Sycamore Review, New Letters, The Cortland Review, The Citron Review, Innisfree, Rhino, DMQ Review, Pirene’s Fountain, I-70 Review, 86 Logic, and others. She’s been anthologized in Beyond the Lyric Moment (Tebot Bach, 2014), and has been nominated several times for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.

Tulip by Megan Rahm

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Tulip

Break me.
Knock me down.
Every heartache is a stepping stone
and my future is under construction.
Pick me like tulips in spring
and watch me wilt.
I come back every year
stronger, steadfast.
I’m grounded in my roots,
nourished by the storm,
and at dawn, I flourish again.
Remember my beauty
in the long winter months.

*

Megan Rahm (she/her) is a restless mom from Toledo, Ohio who has found her voice in art and writing. Her spirited eight-year-old daughter often inspires her work and she never leaves her house without her Chromebook and Sharpies. She loves Toledo’s weather and hates Costco on a Saturday afternoon. Her debut poetry collection, Free to Roam: Poems from a Heathen Mommy, was released in 2021 by Freethought House. She also publishes frequently on her blog, From the Ashes of Faith.

Every Woman by E.C. Gannon

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Every Woman

I deserve to have someone paint a nude portrait
of me, I really do. I deserve to disrobe in someone’s
studio, to lie on a vintage couch with my tattooed
arm draped limply over my head. I deserve to have
someone study the contour of my neck, the lopsided
proportions of my tits, the right pushed upward
by the armrest, the extra cartilage beneath my ribs.
I deserve to have someone run their hand down
my torso to fully understand the way it rises until
the peak of my child-bearing hips. I deserve to have
someone objectively study the curls of my pubic hair,
the constellation of freckles on my inner thigh.
I deserve to have someone recognize the artistry
of this bare body, the nicks on my calves, the
bruises on my forearms, the muscle in my thighs.

*

E.C. Gannon’s work has appeared in Peatsmoke Journal, Assignment Magazine, SoFloPoJo, Olit, and elsewhere. A New England native, she holds a degree in creative writing and political science from Florida State University.