All Nonfiction
- Bullying
- Books
- Academic
- Author Interviews
- Celebrity interviews
- College Articles
- College Essays
- Educator of the Year
- Heroes
- Interviews
- Memoir
- Personal Experience
- Sports
- Travel & Culture
All Opinions
- Bullying
- Current Events / Politics
- Discrimination
- Drugs / Alcohol / Smoking
- Entertainment / Celebrities
- Environment
- Love / Relationships
- Movies / Music / TV
- Pop Culture / Trends
- School / College
- Social Issues / Civics
- Spirituality / Religion
- Sports / Hobbies
All Hot Topics
- Bullying
- Community Service
- Environment
- Health
- Letters to the Editor
- Pride & Prejudice
- What Matters
- Back
Summer Guide
- Program Links
- Program Reviews
- Back
College Guide
- College Links
- College Reviews
- College Essays
- College Articles
- Back
The Archetypal Woman
Snaking up a body of offbeat crooked hobbles
Black leather encases her in obsequious devotion
And a cowboy hat compresses her body into a puddle
That seeps throughout the room, wetting the feet of kinetic children
Each strike of her sanded wood cane on the floor is a statement
An attack on the world outside
In old age and hurt body and prejudice
The archetypal woman does not hide
Bouncing gradients of vibrance cocoon a stubborn ember
A colored cadence that follows successive cascades
Brown cane black leather brown skin white eyes
Her footsteps have their own weather
Defiance incarnate
F*** you to the system
"I'll get me myself"
The strata, the order, make it weak at the base
Take up your wood chisel, spray them with mace
Collapse this whole schema, strike it right in the face
Sit down and say thank you, with your polite, Sudanese vase
That has flying colors breaking walls and shooting needles into history
Sewing a new past of ripped fabric
This archetypal woman redefined humanity right then and there
Pull from all corners of the globe and big ideas
Condense them to yourself and mosaic, are you not?
With her wood cane and cowboy hat — no stop
Forget the old world
B***h I am aloft
There was never a Greece or a Capetian flag
a modern black subculture, some network of enclaves in enclaves in enclaves
Rising up and converging and reaching around one another to pen some sharp dot at the top
For you to look at and say "Ah"
islamic golden age and great tang china
songtsen gampo and inca and maya
Vaporized into medium
Into that cold, fresh water of secular salvation you know so well
That microchip naked to the eye
Delivered to Void.
History is no more, the thin sheets of time past, what is left, wrap around
The Archetypal Woman
Parades them as a trailing robe
Parades them in her black leather clothes
Holds this destruction up to the sky says f*** you to the past
And all you chefs chopping up culture into little bits for your diversity casserole
The slate is clean
It isn't a problem anymore, we're all invisible
The Archetypal Woman beat her cane against the ground,
and she broke old threads and put new ones in place
Not a mismatched connection of tense, wavering string
A quilt that blankets us all
Blankets the sun in a womb of floating, suffocating heat
So we have more to focus on
Similar Articles
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
This article has 0 comments.
Inspired by a woman I saw at a food pantry who commanded the room with more authority than any of the wealthbags giving her food ever could.