Apocryphal Idols

by Cheryl Vail, with image above by Martin Gollan

Liberty’s a goddess
yet how can she embody her name
when she isn’t permitted to be    as she is
when her own choices are sand through a    sieve held
in someone else’s hands

she isn’t an automaton    that prefix doesn’t work
she’s more marionette    bound by politicians’ strings
or paper doll    her dimensions compressed

libertas the origins of    means ‘belonging to the people’
         and this in turn means ‘free’
but what is freedom at the cost of her body
but what is freedom at the exhaustion of her will

how can she be free    when she belongs to ‘the people’
when she doesn’t belong to herself?

My body is not your soapbox

by Cheryl Vail

you are not the arbiter of my curve appeal
the constable ticketing the lack of a gap between thighs
or the angle of sharp elbows
my orifices are not your sink holes
you’re not the border agent stationed at my labia
you’re not the master of my clitoris
you don’t decide if she is he if a chromosome has a Y

my body is not your soapbox
your legislation is an abomination
to push policies that send your
agenda on trajectories to keep
people in their place
or ostracize those of us
who don’t abide by your sanctified lies

my body is not your soapbox
to say the cells in my womb
are yours to groom is as terrible
as when you abandon them to be a pariah
once the air has filled their lungs
abortions the appropriateness of social welfare and
the length of my pubic pit and chin hair
are not yours to decide in state houses
or the zeitgeist

my body is not your soapbox
is not your package bound in pink tape
my nipples are not daggers blinding your morals
my breasts may they be mountains or molehills
are beautiful and bountiful and only sexual
if I want them to be

my body is not your soapbox
my menstrual cycle is not your profit
your luxury tax and it is not my shame
you are not the tailor of my skirt hem
or the seamstress taking in my waist

my body is not your soapbox
take away the legalese
the posturing and proselytizing
I’m not the downfall of paradise
and I’m not your bully pulpit
my body is not your soapbox.