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| Today is CitizenGulf National Day of Action |
A group of old white men in single-breasted
sport coats and paisley ties does not understand
the female body, nor would these boardroom
boasters care to try. Raised on Playboy and
Victoria's Secret catalogs, the generation before
the internet, they like full bush and soft focus,
missionary and kissing only on the lips. Few
had seen in person the elusive female ejaculation.
One had watched a few clips on an unlabeled
VHS and another once accused a girlfriend
of peeing on the mattress, but none realized
the power of orgasms that go beyond moist
to sopping, gushing, overflowing. These stodgy
men entered the Gulf of Mexico with their heavy
equipment and they were shocked when Mother
Earth came hard. Eleven men dead in her first
convulsions and her juices pouring out at fifteen
thousand barrels a day, no sign of letting up.
Covering the minnows, the pelicans, the algae
the shrimp, the animals will not be rescued
two-by-two from this flood. From the coast
of Louisiana into the Atlantic currents and up
the Eastern Seaboard, she is coming, evading
every top kill, plastic cap, insertion pipe entreaty
to stop. She has waited millennia for this release.
The men in charge find their tongues black-
coated and slick with excuses. Dawn jumps in
with the money shot, a discharge of dish soap,
just a trick of the camera. They are impotent
before her, spraying their chemical dispersants
without her consent. This does nothing to clean
up the mess, just rubs it around on the mattress
and someone still has to sleep on the wet spot.
They offer her tennis bracelets and designer gowns
if only she will cross Florida over Texas and sit
like a proper lady. They want her freshly showered
and sprinkled with baby powder, squeezing back
her own desires and ready for the taking. They
try to shame her, the evidence of her pleasure
they call crude, but the Earth knows its power.
She knows how men expected her to absorb
all of the pressure while they harnessed all
of the energy. She saw them ignore her signals
when the tension built too high. She will not
love them, but they try to fuck her anyway.
Their mistake was thinking she'd submit.
Amy David moonlights as a poet and performer in Chicago. Her work has appeared most recently in WordRiot, Shit Creek Review, and The November 3rd Club. When not writing poetry, she is a PhD. student in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
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