THE POWER OF WHITE MEN

by Ashley Green

Hours after the Alabama Senate voted late Tuesday to ban abortions in almost all circumstances — including in cases of rape and incest — women’s rights activists and abortion advocates said the decision to approve the nation’s strictest abortion measure has energized them. Knowing that the bill was designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, they are gearing up for the fight. The Senate’s approval of the legislation in a party-line 25-to-6 vote Tuesday sent it to Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk. . . . Ivey signed the law Wednesday.” —The Washington Post, May 15, 2019. Photo by Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters via Aljazeera, May 15, 2019.

Twenty-five fingers slide between
Alabama’s legs as the white, male
gaze of the white, male monster
searches Her face for panic.
Women can’t be trusted
drips from its twenty-five mouths
and its fifty corners upturn as its
red tape tongues wraps themselves
around Her body.
They pull Her toward the stench
of the past that blossoms
at the back of its throats.
Her sisters' cries
echo from the darkness
of the monster’s shared gut.
She can hear the dying
of Georgia, Kentucky and Ohio,
of Mississippi and Arkansas,
as each plummets backward
in time behind the teeth of
the white, male mouths
sitting on the white, male faces
of the white, male monsters
destroying the country.


Ashley Green is a Southern California writer, poet, and feminist.

2018

by Ashley Green

Let’s talk about it.


Twelve and
the twenty-year-old touching
the back of your leg
where the shorts ended and your thigh began.

Thirteen and
the stucco pulling hair
from the back of your head and scraping
the backs of your arms
as his eighteen-year-old body
crushed you and
his hands pushed your legs open. 


Sixteen and
your classmate crawling
up your dazed, drunk body
unbuttoning your pants and
telling you
it’s okay.

Eighteen and
the boy you loved
forcibly turning you over
his grunts and moans
made you nauseous and
the pain of him inside you
made you cry.

Twenty and
 your neighbor corners you
 in his room and
tells you that you can’t leave
so you beg and
push and
cry and
his arms outstretch around you, caging you in.

Let’s talk about it and
 talk about it and
 talk about it until
 we are out of breath.
Let’s tell the world how
you bent our bodies and
bruised our skin and
made us bleed and
stole from us and
how we are still here
to talk about it.

Let’s talk about it.



Ashley Green lives in Southern California where she is surrounded by brilliant women.