Megan Falley's Blog, page 135

loverofstories:Megan Falley

loverofstories:

Megan Falley

my horoscope is so right for this month it OFFENDS ME.

my horoscope is so right for this month it OFFENDS ME.

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz reviews Megan Falley's After the Witch Hunt

“When a reporter tried to compliment legendary feminist Gloria Steinem on her 40th birthday by telling her, “Oh, you don’t look 40!” Steinem replied simply, “This is what forty looks like. We’ve been lying for so long, who would know?”

I am reminded of this quote when reading “After the Witch Hunt,” the debut book of poetry by 23-year-old poet Megan Falley. Falley is so grounded and clear-eyed in her perspectives, so attentive and nuanced in her details, and so sharp and telling her understanding of the world she exists in, that the instinct is to say that she is a poet wise beyond her years. But if there is something that Falley wishes us to know, perhaps it is that — to paraphrase Gloria Steinem — this is what 23 looks like, and that we’ve been lying for so long, who would know?

Falley navigates sometimes beautiful, but often harshly cruel world that meets young women the moment they booted from childhood, when “breasts arrived / as a kind of currency.” Falley exposes the confusing messages women receive from the media — in poems like “To the Women Competing on E! Entertainment’s Hit Reality Television Show, ‘Bridalplasty’” and “Penelope Pussycat Finally Speaks” a persona piece written from the perspective of the black cat relentless pursued by the cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew, who “pretended [her] refusal was foreplay.” — as well as their own family and friends — such as the mother who excuses a bullying boy’s behavior, telling the narrator “It probably means he likes you.”

Another rich theme that runs through the book is the risks — both beautiful and grim — that you face when allow yourself to fall in love. While Falley celebrates love in her work, she also speaks candidly about the dangers she found herself in when she fell into an abusive relationship. “Tell us who did this to you” she writes in the poem “Family”, “What shade of dusk he wears, / the floorboards he haunts— which / borough? We’d like to meet // the one who turned your body into dangling meat.”

Falley explores the full spectrum of what it means to be young and woman in 21st century America. Candid, grounded, beautifully written and undeniably real, I highly recommend “After the Witch Hunt” to anyone who wants to know (or be reminded of) what being twenty-three really looks like.”

-Cristin O’Keefe Apotowicz

You can buy or review my book HERE. 

26.30 ENVY

National Poetry Month 30/30 Challenge Home Stretch Late Night Postings.

ENVY
After Sabrina Adikes

She is the only girl
my brother loves.
She is iridescent
and thin, as a butterfly’s
gown. She is staying
in the house for a week,
pushing her food around
on the plate, laughing
at perfect decibel. Spraying
his sheets with her perfume,
adequately named Love Spell,
so even after she leaves
she doesn’t leave.
When they are out
of the house, I sneak
into her cosmetic bag;
it is a candy store
for the homely
and plain. I steal
a palette of eye shadow.
(Still have it. Still 
sometimes try to paint myself
her shade of worth.)
A baseball game is on
and she is so perfect
pretending, convincingly,
that she cares.
The boys want to
carry the better TV
from upstairs
to the living room.
When she offers to help
someone utters No,
Megan can help.
You, you can be
the antenna. 

25.30 GLUTTON

NAPOWRIMO 30/30 Home-stretch poems.

GLUTTON

It is Spring in Nineteen-Eighty-Something.
A man and a woman are on their fifth date.
The trees are pouting their cherry blossom lips
at every passerby. Calves and shoulders flirt
out of hibernation. The sun charms freckles
from beneath the skin like a lighter to tics.
The birds come back North, to New York,
and the Ice Cream Truck toots its American Anthem.
Hypnotizing children out of their houses, away
from their baseball diamonds, they wave their allowance
money like the tongue of a hungry dog. The couple
on their fifth date watch  as a chubby boy teeters
down the street, the flesh tire of his middle poking out
between a striped t-shirt and khaki shorts
that don’t exactly meet. He sings his order:
a double cone. Chocolate and vanilla. Cherry-dipped.
Rainbow sprinkles. The cone looks like a carnival. And right
before he is about to lick his first heavenly lick, a surprise
of April’s cruel wind slaps it from his meaty fist. The street
is a massacre and the truck’s music is surely serenading another 
town by now. The woman on the fifth date knows there is nothing
more tragic than this. But the man on the date throws
his head back and laughs. Don’t worry he bends down
to the boy. You didn’t need it anyway. Pokes his lard.
A year later, the woman marries the man regardless,
even though she tells this story as if she said I do
to a convicted murderer. They will have a daughter. 
Inside her will live the little boy with the spilled cone. 
He will always be hungry. She will have her mother’s heart
and will always feed him. She inherits the venom tongue
of her father. After I bury the boy in food, more, more
I taunt him. You didn’t need that, fatty. Look at all that
chocolate on your face. Whose going to love you now?

-Megan Falley

Remember when I said I’d only post extremely worth-it...

Remember when I said I’d only post extremely worth-it poetry videos? Haven’t I been right so far?

Well, here’s one more: Miles Walser performs a new poem about his gender identity. It’s brave and beautiful and incredible. And, if you LIKE the video afterward, you’ll be contributing a vote that may help him win a book deal with WRITE BLOODY PUBLISHING. So watch, enjoy, and make sure you “like” it. No one deserves this more.

SIGNAL BOOST: REBLOG THIS.

24.30 GREED

Trying to write seven poems on the last day of April to finish up 30/30. Farewell, National Poetry Month. It’s been really real.

GREED

I was given a mother
and a father. I wanted them
in the same house. Given half
a brother. Yanked his lost twin
back by the shadow. Given a cat,
her three litters of kittens.
Hid them in my dress pockets.
The mailbox. Slippers. For weeks,
I kept them all. Demanded a dog.
The whole zoo. Scooped up the lost
Chihuahua on our doorstep. Haven’t
let her down since. I was given privilege
skin and asked forgiveness. The sun
and moon sharing the same sky.
Given breasts, asked for ass.
Given smart, asked for thin,
for buffet, couch,dessert
and waistline. Had a man
who loved me quiet as snow.
Hunted thunder. Got it.
Asked for distance. Granted.
From everyone. Asked for friends,
made them up. My life was spared,
I asked for death. Given death,
I asked for more. To relive
each morsel of ache. Given paper,
plume, unbound language. 
Asked for spotlight. Stage time.
Your undivided attention. Wrote
a book. Wanted spine. To feel it all.
For everyone else
to feel it too.

23.30 WRATH

Trying to write eight poems on the last day of April to finish up 30/30. Thank you to Rachel McKibbens for the prompt. Farewell, National Poetry Month. It’s been really real.

WRATH

The star of his funeral
is my face, stoic as a stillborn
whose mother suffered
punches to the gut. 

The weeping girls with their black lace
argue over who gets to be The Widow.
They brew a tornado of shaving razors,
steak knives, sick needles
and huff it my way.
 
Curse my face
and its drought of sadness.
Spit why are you even here?
Waiting for a single tear,
even a flashof tooth.

I approach his neat corpse,
grab the crotch of his pants
where he once kept his weapon,
hard. Utter to make sure
he’s really dead. 

With that, the stitching
of their skirts pop, letting down
the hems of their dresses
to conceal their ashamed knees,
bloody from kneeling
at his shrine.

When the paparazzi tells this story,
they make sure to mention I did not wear black,
but a bonfire.

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF NATIONAL POETRY MONTH.

I did not write a poem everyday. I wrote 22 poems in 30 days. Some of them are my favorite poems I’ve ever written. I think that’s okay.
I received 200 copies of my first ever BOOK, published by Write Bloody publishing. I held it in my hands. I loved it like a newborn.
I booked a party at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe in May for the release of that book. You’re INVITED.
I found out that I’m competing in the finals for The Nuyorican Slam Team (Friday, May 4th) and The LouderArts Slam Team (Monday, May 6th) and if I win either of these slams, I’m on a team for the summer.
I formed at team with Rachel McKibbens, Carrie Rudzinski, Emily Rose and Marty McConnel for the Rustbelt Tournament in June.
My poetry book became available (not just pre-order) on Amazon. You can order a copy and you’ll have it in a couple of days.
Found out I’m being published in decomP.
Was booked for Take Back the Night in New Paltz. It will be my sixth year reading poems at this event. Holy moly. 
I helped edit a really incredible manuscript by Miles Walser for the Write Bloody submission contest.
I performed for an incredible group of High School students on Long Island at their annual writer’s retreat.
I started booking a cross-country national book tour for September-November. It’s been the most challenging, daunting process of my life. I’m planning where I’ll be exactly months in advance and I’ve never lived this way before. Just me and my car. Alone, alone. Please contact me if you want me to come to your school or your city. It would turn this into National Poetry YEAR.
I love you. I did that this month, too.

you. this.[thanks to steph for the amazing design]

you. this.

[thanks to steph for the amazing design]