Rejected Lit
poetry and prose that doesn't fit in
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Photo: Fabrice B. Poussin
LEICA V-LUX (Typ 114)
f/3.6
1/80th
24mm

Photo: Fabrice B. Poussin

I. 

Be proud

of your curves,

they said.
You are more fabulous

than you realize,

they said –

but could you move a little to the left

maybe

stand in the back there behind everyone else –

yes
curves

are a fabulous last place


II. 

And what about the stigmas attached

to sizes and scales and choices at every single meal?
Tell me

you have never judged her

for that doughnut

or that salad.

You know
fat girl eating

or just

fat girl –

unhealthy

unappealing

unwelcome

fat girl.

Look at me

and tell me you have never used those words

to scorn her


III.

You

are not privy

to the photograph on my I.D.

some fifty pounds heavier,

half-hearted smile

and eyes glazed over

anything but another picture –
I was there dreading the skinny girl next to me,

dreaming that I would be just as pretty –

tell me

when I walked up here

did you know I lost so much weight?
No.

of course not.
All anyone ever sees

is the mass of me.
Forget about asking if I show my success
No –

I am another fat girl

on death row

just like the rest



IV.

I had a boyfriend once

and what he said to me

should have ended that pretty quickly:

You would be so

beautiful
if you just lost

a few more pounds.”

Well fuck you sir.

Have I not been struggling with my concept of self

this entire time?
Have you always

objectified

beauty

as something tangible

only for you

only the way you see it?

Have I been unclear with all my screaming?
Tell me

you weren’t the one

taping covers back on my torn Vogue magazines –

tell me

you weren’t the one consoling the bruised egos of directors

who cast me in the chorus

with no lines

and no spotlight

when I walked off that stage –

tell me

you did not just undo

all that I have fought for

with those small

yet venomous words –



V.
You

with your insults hidden in backhanded compliments

do not worry or stress

when you look in the mirror and get dressed for the day

not like I do.
You do not have to force yourself to smile.
Life is easy for you –

fit and thin and perfect.

What I see

is my extra chin

and the way my midsection stretches way past

this limit forced upon me –

I see the scars and stretchmarks

that I am expected to hide

That

is what it means to “dress for your body type.”


VI.

I want to believe

my heavy frame is beautiful

when the world deems it ugly –

I want a world where
I am seen as intelligent

or funny

instead of overweight and unworthy

of any other opinion –

I want an armor

of more than just my thick skin

to stop bullets

which are your words

and your media

and your assumptions –
I want to be free

of the voices

outside and in

that tell me I am not enough;

that I will never

in all the world

be loved

for simply being me


VII.

I lie to my reflection
so she believes

she can go on.
I tell her she is beautiful

just the way she is,

because if I let her know

what I really think

of her image staring back at me
the tears will fall
and I cannot reach through

to wipe them from her eyes.

She 
is the truth

behind the mask I wear for the world

in this war we have been waging.



VIII.

I

have fought long and hard

and I am tired.
Tired

of lying.
tired of constantly making up excuses

when asked why I’m crying

tired

of hefting the world’s opinion

on my shoulders –

I cannot see past the storm anymore.

This war

tries so hard to drown me

in self consciousness

to bury me

in blame

for the weight

that I carry

as if it is my fault
I do not fit

their idea

of perfection.


IX.

I still

did not make the choice
to leave him

for his ugly words.
I was shocked
that the man I loved
did not find me

good enough

to be by his side.

I would reason

that he didn’t mean it,

that he thought I was beautiful

because I needed his validation

since I could not find it in myself –


X.

I waited

until he told me

he never loved me

to stop telling myself otherwise.


- K.M. Alleena

There’s always time
for poorly drawn
hearts

The moon counts on it.
I count on the moon
for advice.

2 moons + 1 triangle = a heart.

The neon density of poorly drawn
muscles accentuate phosphorescent
nonsense, this heart, a door knob
rusted and stuck. I enter the assume.

All I found
was a need

to draw
poorly
what we all
claim beats
inside.

I lick an envelope, sealed,
then I lick the wind
with an agency of new.

I mailed my poorly drawn heart to you.

You replied.

With perfectly drawn ones.

Enchanted gold-silver-ocean-
melted-crayon that seemed to consume
the page.

Your hearts were perfect.

That is why I had to leave you.

- Thomas Fucaloro

I am from every place,
Where my heart has touched
The roots and leaves.

Where I ran my fingers through the grass,
The garbage on the city sidewalks.
And the manure which through the car windows,
I only ever had my eyes pass by.

I am from where my heart yearns ever to go.
Where my practice in a 40 celcius heated room,
Will turn into my prayers before the Ganges.

I am where the radiation of battle has begun,
Where he slept and his head hit a pillow.
I am from the hills of the Italian peninsula,
Where no one ever spoke English,
And where ancestors learned that not being able to read,
Was the gift to this orator.

I am from many different homes,
Over this lifetime.
And even the life before that.

- M. A. Mahadeo

“red”
photo: Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz
LG Electronics LG-D850
f/2.4
1/120th
3mm

“red”

photo: Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

~for Sara

“What’s that you got there?” people would always ask the boy.

 “My heart,” he’d say, staring at the heart-shaped yellow leaf in his cupped hands. “I carry it everywhere.”

 “Why?” they’d ask.

 “I’m not just going to leave it lying around,” he’d say.

 One evening a gust of wind stole it from his hands and whipped it away over the rooftops. Day after day the boy searched every street, every yard, but it was gone.

Until the blonde girl from three houses down knocked on his door. In her hands was his leaf, suspended now in a solid glass cube.

“Where’d you find it?” he said, overjoyed.

 “It blew in through my window,” she said. “I knew right away it was yours. I’ve seen you carry it around. I would’ve brought it to you sooner, but I had it sealed inside this cube first. Now the wind can’t ever take it from you, and it won’t crumble away or turn to dust.” She held out the encased leaf. “Here.”

The boy reached for it, then dropped his hands. “You keep it.”

 “I can’t. It’s yours.”

 “You saved it, so it’s yours now. Besides, it looks brighter when you hold it. It shines like gold—like your hair.”

 “Well, whenever you want to see it, you know exactly where to find it.”

 “With you,” he said.

 “With me,” said the girl from three houses down.    


- Scott Hughes


Then, in some nights like these,
I feel cold and lonely in rooms engulfed
By frost and colds lost on their way to the mountain.
I dream of running to the station sometimes
With a train ticket and passport in hand
To board one back to the grave
Where all my brothers and sisters gather
Rich and poor, slave and master, preacher or sinner
Without hope or courage in light and darkness.

I want to fly over the hills and oceans again
Thinking, if the caves of the Himalayas and Andes
Swallow us from the glimpse of man’s radar
Will the sins I committed when I was guilty
Before my blood tainted the wrecks and rocks
Count before the good Lord man extorted divinity from?

Only if I could swim or float on the blue ocean waters
I would wash away the dirt I see in my mind sometimes
Entering a parlour of racists, welcomed by monkeys and
Babies hanging on walls; marble glittering beneath
Poor black ladies paid to scream and exalt racist feudalists
Creeping into our forests in foggy nights,
Maiming and disfiguring mothers and babies
Even animals when man’s blood alone can’t wash
Nubba Mountain and the hot dry soils of Darfur clean.

- Beaton Galafa

After years of suffering, I felt better standing up.
I can’t deny it!  All those humdrum days of patient whimpering
were like so much sweat beneath the bed covers.
But now I am walking about, and…
There is no escaping our practical natures.
Like the skyscrapers’ blank, ordered windows
in the sky, in the clouds, in the blue.
What basically is a matter of stuff
is a question of limitlessness… of infinities…
of billions in billings of it, all adding up;
heavy office furniture and equipment hundreds of feet up,
and floors of vast hovering carpets.
Staring upwards beyond the trees,
I imagine those tenants
- their aerial knees -
straightening their ties
and adjusting their sleeves.
The glossy tops of their work-a-day shoes
hide soles reverent as butlers.
And yet, power has its purposes…
Of what use is a penniless King?

- Carl Nelson

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, but no one
wants to remember that. My dad and his five siblings
all grew up Catholic, and he doesn’t want to remember that
either. In the car, he tells me he’s forgotten the Lord’s Prayer.
My dad asks me if I remember it, and I ask,
how can I remember something you never even taught me?

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and before we bury him
his nephew asks what liquor will be available at the reception,
and it’s like we all forget how to speak for three minutes.
My father does not remember the Lord’s Prayer. I know
the first seventeen words of it, and close my mouth
for the rest of it. I hum along to it like it’s a hymn
I have known my entire life. I don’t fool anybody.

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and now Aunt Margaret
is asking me if I think the same will happen to my father.
Before I can answer, she asks me why I don’t go to Mass.
She says, prayer is the best antidepressant I know of, and scoffs
when I say nobody ever taught me how to pray. I say,
a book did teach me the beginning of a prayer in Latin once,
and she scoffs again.

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and was buried
next to his father, who also drank himself to death.
Aunt Margaret hasn’t spoken to me since I flew back home
to my godless poetry and Zoloft prescription. She’ll never know
that I have never felt more Catholic than I did in that cemetery:
answering for my father’s sins. Mourning a man’s tragic death,
but doing nothing to stop it from happening to another member
of the family. Being rejected from the religion that may have never
been mine to begin with.

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and so did Grandpa Larry,
and my dad calls me after finishing off three bottles of wine
at least once a month. Each time, he recites the Lord’s Prayer for me,
and he always does it flawlessly.

- Lydia Havens

Dear Maura,

Do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.


I keep track of you, I keep track of the news, and I know that you conceivably could do so soon, but for your own sake: do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.


I understand that scientists are more aware of the ethics of these sorts of things than English teachers, and I understand that career advice is best received from someone in the same line of work, and I understand that even then, advice is best received when solicited (which this is not), but even so, here I am.


Given that this is your line of work, I’m sure you know more than I do what a woolly mammoth’s life might have been like, and that in all reality the only thing I am qualified to know about them is how many L’s are in woolly.


But even so.


In general, I am in favor of cloning and the like—we’ve talked about this. We talked, at John’s that night after organic chemistry, about cloning and progress, but this is a different animal entirely. Because Maura, you forget that I know you.


I remember your mother on the phone, telling you that you would always be unloved and alone because of what you chose to be. I remember the stares that followed you even in a liberal college, and I remember the way I walked into your room with Chinese takeout one night to find you crying. You asked me if it was ever possible to stop feeling guilty for being yourself.


And for all of those reasons, I ask you not to resurrect the woolly mammoth.


I’m sure you know this already, but we killed them. Their environment was dying as the glaciers did, and we hunted them to extinction. And perhaps now we would not, perhaps humanity would value their un-extinction as too valuable to hunt.


But I think we both know that is too much to hope for.


I think we both know that the nature of humanity has not changed, that without an environment safe from us, they would be gone again soon.


Because Maura, when we bring to life the things we know cannot live, all we are trying to do is prove that we can. You are trying to prove that a woman like yourself can be beloved as a scientist, by bringing to life a species you know full well is doomed to fail.


I am not saying your quest to be loved is a doomed one, no. But the battles you are choosing to win that war are doomed ones, ones you will fail no matter your immediate success.


What I have seen though, what I have watched through twenty years and thousands of students, is that anyone trying to prove their right to exist wants to bring doomed beings into creation. They are Frankenstein, trying to survive and being twisted into monsters by anyone who watches. An English teacher knows this much.


And perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I am exhausted of watching people create and then see their creations destroyed. Maura, I cannot bear that for you too.


I do not want you to have to prove that a woolly mammoth can exist to know that you can too, and because I know it cannot, I beg you not to try. I do not want you to have to bear its second extinction, I do not want you to have to bear watching your own hope die in proxy.


It is of course, possible that I am wrong. Mammoths would be kept in captivity, protected, but I know this is not your dream for them. I know you will look into their eyes and see failure reflected back, and I do not want that for you.


Maura, we have scorched the earth on which woolly mammoths walked, they have gone. Bringing them back will not mean that was not done, it will only mean that eventually, it will happen again. But you are still here, brilliant and queer and beautiful, walking scorched earth as if it were lush grass.


You are existing, you are not extinct. That is all the proof you need of your own worthiness.


Your friend,
Harry


- Andy Stowers