"Everyone in Me Is a Bird" by Melissa Studdard

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend November 29, 2017   Everyone in Me Is a Bird   Melissa Studdard

Mind was a prison, ruby lined in its lipstick noir—everything woman I was expected to be, trapped between papered walls. What they said to do, I did not but only levitated at the burning, the body a water in which I drowned, the life a windshield dirty with love. What they said to think, I thought not but instead made my mind into a birdcage with wings             (Title is from an Anne Sexton Poem.)            Copyright © 2017 Melissa Studdard. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I've been wounded by and obsessed with my own complicity in caging myself inside gender and societal expectations, but as I thought about the horrible things that have happened historically to women who didn't conform, as well as the insidious ways people of all genders are indoctrinated, I began to have a gentler understanding of why I might have at times confused societal norms for my own desires. I wondered, then, if I could ever be free, and when I closed my eyes, I saw a vision of all the conforming and nonconforming parts of myself as many birds in one cage. In the vision, the cage was weak and flimsy—so far less consequential than what was inside it—that I realized even if I could not yet fully free myself, I could give the cage itself wings and still fly." —Melissa Studdard   Melissa Studdard is the author of I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (Saint Julian Press, 2014). She is a professor at Lone Star College-Tomball and lives in Houston, Texas. Poetry by Studdard   I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (Saint Julian Press, 2014) "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich "A Woman Sleeps on an Island" by Marjorie Agosín Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

From Our Sponsors