My God is a Woman

Tell me why the world cracks open my soul as if I had more than one,
and tosses it like a peanut shell unto the floor,
tell me why I can’t be angry at the horizon
for being an imaginary line that recedes as I get closer to it,
just because it’s beautiful, just because I’m a woman.
Sometimes, no, every day I pray that
God is a woman,
the sun and moon her breasts,
the clothed trees her pubic hair,
maybe then men would quit telling women to shave;
if God was a woman I’d be free.
Like the stars bow before God,
men would bow before me instead of slaughtering me.
People with blood, bone, and beating chests
tell me women are not oppressed,
but my voice trips over my soul of littered peanut shells spat out by the tongues of men,
I want to tell them about the bodies in bushes,
the holes we have between our legs that we didn’t ask to be filled,
I want to tell them,
about the bodies,
but they are everywhere;
they are in my throat, in my fingertips, there are women in my belly and they are scared to come out.
Every time I see a woman on the street, I see her in a bush,
in a car, in her own bed, in an alley, at work,
I see them strewn, like limp candies from one cosmic piñata shaped like a dick.
I want to tell them about the bodies peppering the world
and how I don’t think that’s what God meant when she said to be the salt of the earth.
Sometimes, no, every day I wish God were a woman,
But really I wish men were good;

if men were good, I could be free.

-anna sluder

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