These three poems by Shannon Magee question the type of love most valued by society, the pressure to attain it, and the harmful, far-reaching impact of this dynamic…
by: Shannon Magee
Killing Us Softly*
I am
Boots black
Heels high
I am
Manners refined
Neck unlined
I am
Toned arms
Narrow thighs
I am
Booty full
Weight precise
I am
Smile lines erased
Trendy, snatched waist
I am
Another meal denied
Seven step skincare applied
I am
Scale supplicant
Calorie quantifier
I am
Pink tax economy
Uneasy performativity
I am
Womanly ideal
For man’s appeal
I am
Surgically crafted
Security scarce
I am
Example of the American
Beauty standard farce
I am
Everything
You told me to be
I am
Your perfect
I am
Nothing left
Of me.
*This poem is titled after the documentary series of the same name by Jean Kilbourne, a four volume documentary that explores and highlights how media portrayal of women has impacts on women’s and girls’ self-image, the cycle of violence against and objectification of women, and backlash against the feminist movement. This poem is additionally inspired by current conversations concerned with how female celebrities seem to be more and more held to standards of size and image akin to those of the early 2000’s, undoing decades of work on body positivity, body neutrality, and pushback against harmful bigotry and prejudice based on one’s appearance. Part of this pushback, of course, included scrutinizing the unseen labor expected of women just in order for them to be deemed publicly acceptable and the cost, emotional and economic, of working to meet this standard.
Reconciliation
Testing . . . testing . . . is this thing on?
I’m not used to public confessions, raised Catholic as I was,
Secrets are sloughed off the heart in a wooden box with a screen between us,
My audience and me, the residual scent of incense staining the air.
Here, here I have the fragrance of Friday night sweat and the vapor of alcohol rising from your tongues
As your eyes fix directly on me, no wall in between to buffer my words
No, here I’m proclaiming them, owning them
This borrowed microphone between my sweaty palms
Still, the shame I adopt under scrutiny is the same.
Words weigh heavier when they’re offered from the heart,
Heavier still once they land with their recipient.
This lesson I learned from you.
You, my “you,” who is not here tonight,
This crowd is your substitute, they are my witness.
You, who would never cross paths with me again,
By fate or by design, who can tell anymore?
Our world is so connected, and still so vast
I yearn for serendipity to offer me scraps
As I share these words at open mic after open mic
Hoping one night you will be where I am
Would you enjoy it, I wonder,
Being a stowaway in the audience for my admissions?
To hear our story from my view, in a voice unaware of you?
A screen between us, you and I, of denial, of a mutual need to hide.
Perhaps that seems strange, to seek hiding by taking a place on stage
But this is how I alchemize hurt into something beautiful:
Recasting our time together as a fiction with gilded frames,
A wonderland that could only ever be real in a dream.
This, I’ve learned, is how romance survives
Fantasy can preserve what reality would destroy.
In my dreams, I can still love you.
In my days, I’ll tell stories to keep you alive.
So here is my confession, love, until we meet again:
I know I betrayed you by sharing our story
But it’s the only way I could save a version of us, our most hopeful selves,
From an even bitterer end.
A Question of Mathematics + Distance
At some point, we must understand that love is just a way of distributing energy.
Care is understood in terms of effort:
How many stitches did it take to add the patch to your jacket?
How many texts did I send about silly little things
Because I could find no other way to say,
“How are you? I miss you. Please talk to me.”
I want you to meet me for tea,
Crossing this sea of silence, break it—
I want our conversation to feel fresh and kind,
As it did six years ago.
How much time must be invested to be worth the effort of caring?
What level of care is worth the effort of repair?
I want you to write me a letter of every true thing you’ve felt
No matter how cruel, no matter how embarrassing
Trust me to carry these truths, to show up for you
And I’ll trust your letter, this olive branch, is fragile, but not fraudulent.
Please, let me hold onto something. I want to trust again.
As I think of the energy it takes to love, I keep returning to
The shepherd in Lebanon, the effort of walking day after day
Amidst rain, hunger, occupational bombing
The energy expended to keep his flock safe.
What did the sheep do, in a past life, to earn a love so steadfast?
And here, where there’s little energy distributed toward the effort it takes to love—
What crimes did we commit, to be born on the side of the ocean
Where our hearts are raised to be so hollow?
Shannon Magee is a writer running on stubborn love and defiant whimsy. Her writing has been featured in A Lonely Riot Magazine and Vine Leaves Literary Journal, among others. Currently based in Brooklyn, she can be found online at shannon-magee.com.
