Bad Poetry I Wrote as a Teenager, Volume XL

I dedicate this poem to Sheila.

If you've ever taken a creative writing class, you probably had to do that assignment where you take a line from a famous poem and build your own poem out of it. We had that assignment in high school, and it should come as no surprise to any of you that have been reading my blog for longer than five minutes that I chose a Sylvia Plath poem. I mean, of course I did. And not just any Sylvia Plath poem. No, I had to pick the last one she wrote before she stuck her head in the oven, because I was a morbid teenager. A morbid teenager who also fancied herself a SUPER HARDCORE FEMINIST. Note the sentence structure. What the fuck? Seriously. And don't even get me started on my tense problems.

The woman is perfected
Her dead
Body is that of a saint
Wan smile, stigmata through her heart

The woman was instructed
Her whole
Life to give and love and
Never scream out loud enough to hear

The woman was constructed
Her paper
Dolls were cut and shaped and
Molded to the perfect size

The woman is never resurrected
She dies
Again and again, sacrificing
Herself for the art of martyrdom

Suck on Volume XXXIX, if you missed it the first time around.