When she was born
Her mother wept
Closing her legs once more
Becoming ever the lady
Once more
Her mother wept
That it was a girl
(Pink sprinkles on cookies)
Because she knew better
Than to believe the smile
Of her grey-bearded husband.
The daughter grew up fierce
A fire unquenchable
No matter her father’s attempts
To make her tame and maimed
And when her body betrayed her
And her metamorphosis began
The daughter did her best
To conceal the feminine
Because she knew in her world
It was better to be a son
That male was a near-rhyme to free.
Where grey-bearded traditions failed
Motherly advice prevailed
And a smiling, understanding talk
Put all her tomboyness to rest
Dress replaced pants
Make-up replaced fresh mud
And slavery replaced freedom
Manumission seemed a thing
In a land far far away.
And she grew older still
This girl who had to believe
Had to believe this was
As good as it got
She saw her brothers doing this and that
Doing her and her and her
Laughing as they felt both
Pride for being such cunt-querors
And disgust at the promiscuity
Of these easy sluts
How unfair it all was
That she should want to as well
Sleep around and make mistakes
And cry at getting her heart broken
By some silver-tongued madman
But couldn’t, because when all
Was said and done
It was a sin.
And she never got her sin
Never got to be bad
At every turn
Like clockwork
While her brothers
Made their cocks work
She got her sentence
Do this, girl, don’t do that
Don’t do this, girl, do that
Quote James Brown
This is a man’s world
And she was the Untermensch
Her place under men
Weeping a profound
And solitary sadness
Stamped in inequality
Prettied up as tradition.
When she had children of her own
She smiled and understood
Watching her stallion daughters
And stallion sons
Chasing each other around
This filial cruelty
Was just
The way things were
The part of her that resisted
Gone
A fire put out
The smouldering ruin
Gazing on
Not contradicting herself
No multitudes in her
It was tradition
Customs
And she was custom made
To fit the role
The sentence she got
Had to be carried out.
Ricardo Moran
paratextmag.com 
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