WHEN WE TALK

Michelle Marie was a blog correspondent for Stop Street Harassment and reader columnist for The News Tribune.

CALL AND RESPONSE

by Michelle Marie

Say radical.
Say feminism.
Say Qur'an.
And confuse the fuck out of Americans
Who forget that
Christian values
Inspired both the slave driver
And the abolitionist.
A religion can be more
Than one thing
At once.

Michelle Marie was a blog correspondent for Stop Street Harassment and is currently a reader columnist for The News Tribune.

DEAD END

by Michelle Marie

Photo by Bob Chwedyk | Staff Photographer | The Daily Herald

"Anyone is too good to be a waitress," she told him,
after he asked if she thought her new job was beneath
her. "At 30, I never saw myself making minimum wage

working multiple pink collar jobs." The thought made
her cringe. It was a slap in the face. An affront to her
dignity, her values, everything she stood for. Like her,

I didn't believe in wage slavery. If it kept up with some
combination of inflation, worker productivity and executive
pay raise, minimum wage would be $20 an hour today.

It's not the work, it's the pay that's the problem, we agreed.
She is in a perpetual state of amnesia, trying to forget the
hard facts of her life while maintaining a small degree of

hope. Which is easily dashed when male customers call
her honey or proposition her, like when the amateur
photographer offered to take "professional" photos of her.

He got a strange pleasure from watching her fill orders
and waterglasses and empty the bus bin because there
was no busboy, only her. Like an intrepid reporter in

search of a sad story he asked her nagging questions that
haunted her, that he wrongly assumed would help her see
his depth. But there was no depth to a man who dined with

his camera, toting it around like some big statement. She
knew she was nothing but a walking plot device in this
man's pathetic universe, a keeper of his manhood, a

mirror that doubled his virility. She hated him. And hated
me too. As a patron, I could never be fully on her side
even though I threw a fist up and railed against the system,

even though we exchanged world-weary, knowing glances
as she went about the room fulfilling the obligations of
her dead-end trade, smiling and tolerating stupid questions,

like if she was too good for her job.


Michelle Marie has written for Infita7 and Bluestockings Magazine and is currently a Stop Street Harassment blog correspondent.

INVISIBLE

by Michelle Marie

Source: NY Daily News

nothing is fixed
not the broken boat on the water
not the broken lives fleeing the forces of war
not the broken system that dehumanizes and deports

nothing stands
between those on board and
the breaking of the waves
not the luck that never holds out
not the promises that never pan out
not the border patrol that refuses to look out

for a ship lost at sea
in waters that never deceive:

only when your image is no
longer reflected in the water
do you begin to see yourself
the way the world sees you


Michelle Marie has written for Infita7 and Bluestockings Magazine.

NOT OBLIGED

by Michelle Marie

New Yorker cartoon by Michael Shaw, 2006

with hell to pay
   there was a rallying bray
i am charlie of hebdo !
   precious defiant minstrel show !

spirit grew robust
   wings light pen impaled
rose with a gust
   on which liberté sailed

but grief is a moment
   in that series to say
of violence that went
   the other ruthless way: 

algérie, irak, syrie

a flood of violence
   silting the hills with righteous license

imagination of power
   who fits in a world always ours more
lives drawn'n ink sour
   by martyrs right to offend, therefore

not obliged am i
   to repeat the offender's cry


Michelle Marie has written for Infita7 and Bluestockings Magazine.

SPLIT SHIFT

by Michelle Marie

Protesters demand higher pay at the Tenleytown McDonald's. (WTOP/Savannah Simons)

this poem is sick but
goes home without pay

the bleach bucket, no
time for a scrub, scrub clean

these working conditions. scrub
this median wage of $10 per/hr
tips included//

this poem makes 44% less
than most poems, turn your head, scrub

clean that busted look on your
face & those
anxious demands

what it's about//the customer?
that can afford to eat out/ but
not tip? that busted

institution, the restaurant industry

your demands aren't better pay
benefits
pensions
citizenship

       but a different table
       lemon slices
       this poem's favorite thing on the menu
       an extra side of _____
       a raspberry vinaigrette
       the check, faster

though you couldn't have
eaten slower


Michelle Marie is author of countless protest letters archived at americanlemon.blogspot.com and a weird piece called "Fucking" in Bluestockings Magazine Issue 4.

THE PALESTINE PROJECT

by Michelle Marie

instagram media by hanz_revo

still breathing as the ambulance arrived.

mind, once riddled with thought,
waned faintly and then all at once,
but not before registering the touch of a human hand.

awoke to the crashing of the waves
though there was no ocean nearby,
only the ebb and flow of nations at the rendezvous of victory.


Michelle Marie is author of countless protest letters archived at americanlemon.blogspot.com and a weird piece called "Fucking" in Bluestockings Magazine Issue 4.