This series of posts from the community is in preparation for Paradigm
Shift’s next event, “The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women”
A Discussion with JESSICA VALENTI, Author & Feministing.com
Founder/Editor on TUES, FEB. 23rd, 7pm, NYC. We want to hear your
stories. View call for submissions- deadline 2/19- Click here!
by Barrie Kreinik
This poem explores the violence inherent in the language of virginity loss, the coercive power of that language, and the idea that many girls are led to believe that they should allow their virginity to be taken from them forcibly or prematurely, rather than being willing participants in the taking.
-velation
Under meteorelectric blankets, blossoms
burst, ascending to full-on bloom in gobs
of sweat. Bouquets of wishes wash
away in spatters. Water
the flower bed, flour the batter;
bed her – deflower. A battery
of thrusts, a quarter hour
til the sheets pull back to witness.
No -lief, no -pair or -cover. Just
a smatter.
Sex crimes are designs of the Times: page-four
valentines and Hallmark rhymes, ripped
from the heads of latex lines and
-ceptacles. Found in the Park,
the parking lot – we learn from watching, practice
on our prey.
Park here, to punk, to play, to pluck
the strings of stinging hearts, to prick
the pillow and to pop the plush red fruit.
This thing’s been bought, coerced; its price
inflated when the crash of high school hit.
You’ll let me if you love me and some listen,
but the rip is real. That version of a queen
is stuff of stories.
-Cognizing her descent, the cherry -members
what her branches warned, and falls
from graceful pit…then takes her needle up
to sew again; to fix her torn-up hem, to bite the thread,
to nege the re- and make -conciliation.
First base is free, but he stole home too early.
Whatsamatter – dontcha love me, girlie?
