lindsay cahill



drunk as a poet on payday

Pablo Neruda said that laughter is the language of the soul…
I know— I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda,
and as your president, I would demand a science-fiction library
with an A-B-C of the genre: Asimov, Bester, Clarke…
but no Ray Bradbury.

it’s the Lisa Simpson Book Club—
Poe, Ginsberg, Kerouac.
those are my only friends—
grown-up nerds like Gore Vidal,
and even he's kissed more boys than I ever will…
but solitude never hurt anyone:
Emily Dickinson lived alone,
and she wrote some of the most
beautiful poetry the world has ever known…
then went crazy as a loon.

and it was Mrs. Bouvier, y’know, who drove her friends,
Zelda Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath, so crazy
with jealousy over her good looks;
but don't be bashful— when I was your age,
kids made fun of me because I read at the ninth-grade level…
although, I hardly consider A Separate Peace the ninth-grade level.
pssht, more like pre-school.
it’s the Ayn Rand School for Tots
where A is A, and Helping is Futile.
and I’d just like to remind you that Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
does not contain any hints on how to win the lottery—
it is rather a chilling tale of conformity gone mad:

the turkey's a little dry?
the turkey's a little dry!
oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
what demon from the depths of hell created thee?

truth is beauty; beauty, truth, sir!
but the truth can be harsh and disturbing—
how can that be considered beautiful?
oh, damn you, Walt Whitman—
damn-you-Walt-freaking-Whitman!
Leaves of Grass, my ass!

goodbye, Springfield—
from hell's heart
I stab at thee.


train to Squaresville

hear me roar: a poem for women

Breaking News: an overworked and underappreciated housewife
has parked on the Springfield bridge, refusing to budge.
oh, I always knew someday Mom would violently rise up
and cast off the shackles of our male oppressors.

thinking too much gives you wrinkles.

is the remarkably sexist drivel intentional,
or is it just a horrible mistake?
don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.

that’s not funny, Bart—
millions of girls will grow up thinking
that this is the right way to act—
that they can never be more than vacuous ninnies
whose only goal is to look pretty, land a rich husband,
and spend all day on the phone with their equally vacuous friends
talking about how damn terrific it is to look pretty,
and have a rich husband!

ugh, well I don't know what phallocentric means, but no girls!
if the Bible has taught us nothing else— and it hasn't—
it's that girls should stick to girls' sports,
such as hot-oil wrestling,
foxy boxing,
and such-and-such.

that’s it! when I get married— I’m keeping my own name!
er, maybe that should be ‘if I choose to get married’…

I know! we’ll make our own doll!
she'll have the wisdom of Gertrude Stein,
and the wit of Cathy Guisewite;
the tenacity of Nina Totenberg,
and the common sense of Elizabeth Cady Stanton!
and, to top it off, the down-to-earth good looks of Eleanor Roosevelt.

it’ll be a tribute to the trailblazing women who made our country great:
Georgia O'Keeffe, Susan B. Anthony,
and Marjory Stoneman Douglas…
I'm sure you haven't heard of her,
but she worked her whole life to
preserve the Florida Everglades.

women don’t have to be second class citizens;
the first step to liberation is to free ourselves
from these male-imposed shackles!



lindsay cahill works and experiments in Niagara Falls, Ontario. her poetry has been featured in print anthologies, one-mags, and carved into punky cardboard zine collections across Canada, including ditch, poetry, Steel Bananas, lapse and Dead Souls, among others. in 2010, she founded dead gender magazine—an independent and international art and lit mag dedicated to anti-elitism and general awesomeness. she most recently completed the visual project SOMEANTICS: OCCUPY ACME—a collection of signage used by Wile E. Coyote on The Road Runner Show. lindsay’s currently working on her first full-length poetry manuscript, This is indeed a disturbing universe—a remix of the first ten seasons of The Simpsons—from which the pieces above are taken.

 
 
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