Breweries never have available indoor seating

long uncomfortable stairs from seated customers

as we wait for the bubblegum pink hostess

I slam my yearning for a pen fingers

into my satin laced pockets

hoping to be reaching for something that isn’t just air

Newly grown grass rubs together when the hair on the back of my neck curls

a man with strawberry blonde male pattern baldness and a thirst for young girls eyes me

an anxious haze of blue grass open mic blazes over me as he tells me I’m beautiful

Compliments from strange men old enough to be my father are unwanted

I am not my face or the curves of my body or my scent

I am this poem and the left over paint under my trembling finger nails

I lean out the window of our blurring rental car with illegal smoke stains

to take photos of the place that feels like an afternoon

honks and yells emerge from an approach truck with straw hats

Women should not have to hide under layers of self shame and fabric

to be left alone by boys who cannot keep what they think is mighty inside their pants

we are human beings for christ sake!

I take pictures of old cathedrals not for the religious significance of stone and candles

but for the way the light can hit a stain glass window and shine dust onto rows of pew

hollers from groundsmen cause the dust to settle

Immoral thoughts blossom in my mind as honks from the middle aged blue collar scum

cut across a heat wave of untuned harmonies

an artery clogs my ideas as my blood pressure sky rockets with rage

I will not be known for what is between the cellulite in my thighs

my artistic inspiration does not derive from the way light hits my skin

but from the clouds causing shadows over my scenic view

Just because aluminum edged blades and molten wax tear away my imperfections

does not give you the right by some divine intervention, to think I am perfect

women are not perfect

We are filled with a rage unlike any other

a fight to still be heard over the length of our skirts and hair

climbing over mountains of tossed pamphlets of equality to take our stand

and scream across the valley separating us from them to finally have our voices heard