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Culture March 1, 2022
"Stories Matter" is a women's writing workshop founded by ENTITY Mentor Leslie Zemeckis. The pieces in this collection were all written by her mentees.
A challenging session with an assignment to interview someone seventy years or older and write their story. Our mentors this session included best-selling authors Lisa Barr, Marie Benedict, and Rachael Eckles, journalist Allison Weiner Hope, and Ninette Paloma, poet Aija Mayrock, Marci Darling, and Andrea Estrada.
For our mentoring session over these past several months I wanted to focus on being bold. What is bold? Bold is different for everyone. Everyone wrote about being bold and what it meant for them. The below poem by Madi Oty, I thought was particularly beautiful and wanted to share it.
“With These Wings” by Madi Oty
Bold is the release of the tightness in my chest
Even respiration as vocals erupt from a cord of vowels
When the consonants unravel to sing
As a woman
I will-
Take flight
Mockingbird in the sky
Nudged from its nest to fly
High-Hardly catching-
The shuffling wind beneath its wings
As she steadies to flaunt her beauty
Unconcerned of shots directed in her path
I too will sing my song,
The music of justice
Going against the status quo,
Battling forces almost out of my control
My heart picks up a beat
Palms perspire glazed in anticipation
My face blushes fiery red
Fueled with passion
Marked by embarrassment
I keep soaring.
Proclaiming my own truth
Declaring war against myself
My true nature,
To hide
Recluse into myself
.
Silence
.
I will no longer accept it
For myself
I will venture
Inwards,
I crawl beneath my own skin
Turn it inside and out again
To peel the layers of self devastation
And lay claim on what it means to have a “self”
My-self,
Selfishly, I am born again
Broken free,
I will shoot down my opposition
A woman, fighting
And you cannot silence me.
“The Momento” by Madi Oty
“La Puerta Azúl” by Kimberly Quezada Carrillo
“The Painter on the Terrace” by Kiana Mohammadi
“Frozen Milk and Little Wool Suits” by Maya Salem