It is summer, hot and horny, and I am on a roll. So I am going to continue this theme of beauty, attraction, seduction, sex, love and self-love until I run out of content!

 

Poem for the Woman Who Doesn’t Want a Daughter

By Karen Ethelsdattar, NJ

 

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror & say

“& God created Woman & she is good”

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror

& say “God is a Woman”

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror

& say “I am God’s Daughter”

I want you to look at yourself

with a lover’s eye

& write a poem about yourself that way

I want you to taste yourself & feel yourself & smell yourself

& study how to please yourself

the way you study

the way you were trained to study

to please men

I want you to study women walkin’ down the street

the way you study men

How their hips swing & their breasts sway

& their hair goes free in the wind

& I want you to exult & sing,

“I am one of them”

I want you to bathe yourself like a baby

with scented oil till you gleam

I want you to watch the muscles of women ripple

& say to yourself

how beautiful it is when women are strong

I want you to go to your hairdresser

& say, “I want it natural.

I like the way I am.”

I want you to go through a hundred women’s magazines

& tear out every page on cosmetics & beauty care

& how to reduce yourself to a shadow

& make a fire & let them burn

I want you to boycott perfumed toilet paper

& use an outhouse for a week

in the heat of the summer

& sit there with the door hangin’ open

& look out at the trees

I want you to study proud women

& character lines

in the faces of old women

& think on every woman in your life

who did you good

I want you to find a portrait

of a great woman

& paste it over your television screen

I want you to ask for help from other women

& help them in return

& every time you feel turned on

I want you to close your eyes & say

“This is me

This comes from within.”

 

Published in At Our Core: Women Writing About Power, Papier-Maché Press, c1998

 

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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife.

Queen Mama Donna is the Midlife Midwife™ offering counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity.

Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™: http://www.donnahenes.net/queen/consult.shtml

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The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.