I am the Devil's Gateway
wearing your mother's perfume.
I am the apple,
the hand outstretched,
the serpent glistening below you.
 
I am Pandora's knuckles
on your tongue.
A geisha in Levis,
call me the oldest profession.
 
I am Juliet
with two doses of poison,
an ouborous with a monthly cycle,
flexible and all swallowing.
 
I am the door always open
the three AM phone call
the bathrobe falling
the beer in the fridge
and half a pack of cigarettes.
I am the heartless, the ruthless.
I will help you to bury the evidence and
be your accomplice in your crimes against me.
I will hold the shovel and hotwire the getaway car,
equate consequence with sirens
and run from it.
 
Do it without protection
because you want the hurt to be permanent,
I know where my place is.
Twenty-five cents for another minute.
Seventy-seven cents to the dollar.
 
I am one in four college freshmen.
I am the other three drunk in miniskirts.
 
I am statistics, I am your sister.
I am faceless from behind,
between my ribs a muscle
built like a revolving door.
I am the other, the familiar.
I am anesthetic
without the phone call the morning after.
I am asking for it.
 
This is a hostage taking without ransom.
This is not taking no for an answer.
 
I am setting back the clock:
Suffragettes in garter belts.
Vishpala with her legs spread.
I am Joan of Arc without God or a weapon.
Sacagewa doing deep throat.
Margaret Sanger's bones helping the soil to seed.
I am a legacy of feminism
Forgotten;
the woman driving home from the nightshift
pulling over for the hitchhiker
opening the door from the driver's side.

Ainsley Drew studied screenwriting at NYU Tisch and has written for GO NYC magazine, neither of which prepared her for her current gig as a legal assistant. A native New Yorker who doesn't blush to admit her Long Island roots, she lives in Brooklyn with her best friend where they are known to cavort naked and tempt both genders from their second floor window.

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Keywords : Poetry, Feminism

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