July 7, 2016

A poem by Candice Louisa Daquin: "Suffrage"

Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardic origin and immigrated to the US. She currently lives in the American Southwest. She is a long time editor, reviewer and writer of poetry, and has published three books. Her forth will be available this year. Daquin is an ardent supporter of equality and immigration reform.



"Suffrage" Photo credit: Universal History Archives





Suffrage
 
I cannot imagine the slow bricked madness
Called bitches to be brought to their knees
Job taken, husband vacant, what would YOU do with the vote?
Separation in suffrage
Some turned away crying
“I’m happier without the vote!”
Their emptiness an addiction of blindness
Meanwhile factories disgorge
Minds numbed from learning how much more
Decisions left to penile bureaucrat
Send them to work, babies on backs
Prison is a full stripped naked affair
Blue stockings, coal lunged, washerwoman raw, all and all sharing same depiction
Eve ran off with Lilith, Adam cloned himself, Narcissus you were right
Men controlled the means, the pockets, the takings, even
No escape
Before they enslaved blacks, Asian, Latino, aboriginal
They enslaved 51 percent
Clink, clink, metal around the neck
Women
And we still
Query if we are free
Pretend otherwise, fancy ourselves at liberty
We are not free until
We recognize our imprisonment
Never waste our vote a right fought with blood
No we do not know what it was like
Or why other women betrayed their own
Like glass destined to break
Crushed under horse, bludgeoned for equality
Never tell me we’re free
13 years old still pimped out for your pleasure
Progress or change of venue?
When they service you, and you justify it or try to legalize it
Hiding your penchant for porn
Remember, it’s sanctioning more
“Where are our girls?”
Until the bars on our prison are understood
This can only be achieved when we
Know the history
Of female slavery

~Candice Louisa Daquin

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