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enjoy this writing from Ralph Monday in the free Down in the Dirt 2014 PDF file chapbook: The Girl Next Door and Other Poems (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2014 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book The Girl Next Door and Other Poems

Order this writing in the book What Must be Done (a Down in the Dirt July - Dec. 2014 collection book)		get the 372 page July - Dec. 2014 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Dying Goddess

Ralph Monday

Suicide is within us all, exhibited in the most
queer forms. I have implanted suicide within
my uterus, Kali-like where it has grown like
geological seasons, mountains raised up,
worn down.
I could argue with shadows that my sisters
and I long to be Olympian goddesses. To do so
is to project film clips on a screen, a movie
never finished, eternally in production as it is
passed from one producer to another.
Though I would like to blame men, I cannot
for both male and female, in Greek tunic,
medieval skirt, Victorian garb, nightgown,
evening dress, mini and maxi participated
in the funeral oratory where the sisters slit
their own throats. Urge to thanatos that takes
many forms, a coat of diverse suicide colors.
We have done this to ourselves, no longer
nursing the golden calf, we would return
to mountains, mate with trees, eat moss,
sojourn with wild things, know that the
drums we hear are the beatings of the sisters
perished before us.
At century’s beginning we contemplated
different endings, thought that we might
live, flourish. Through the century moments
of emancipation arrived so that at last we
believed men realized the meaning of the skirt.
Removed by the 60s and 70s from the soldiers’
pin-up girl poster of the 40s, 50s, we danced
in celebration, gave up shaving our underarms,
smooth skin of legs. No longer things, dizzy
with the power of many, by century’s end we
relinquished all that had been conquered, returned
to make-up, eyeliner, dancing as pin-ups on
TV, YouTube, strutting the line in Victoria’s Secret.
Both subject and object, deliverance can only
come from creative suicide. In order to live,
wayward sisters must be burnt to ashes.
In this pew we must sit and pay heed to the sermon.

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