Every Man’s Prize
Barred temptations is how secrets begin
Erratic desires to seize his prize
Pushes him to conspire from within
Now, a friend, and admired in her eyes
Slyly he fills the post of absent love
Easily ‘cause Absentee was ten years
older than she. Their secrets born hereof:
Layered lies, deception and heart-shamed fears
But Absentee knew that his foe had struck
For he felt her presence begin to wane
so he kissed her goodbye and wished them luck
Once in shadows now secrets unrestrained
Soon he will see the pattern she creates
For losing her to shadows is his fate
Gender Is Performance
She was only of his imagination
Fictionalized in concentrated dreams.
In dreams, she’s tame of docility and splendor
Forewarned of insurmountable love and tender
In body, today’s beauty standard of your liking
In dress, of every day’s impracticality
However, I fear you don’t see the unjust of binary
And the ever-evolving experience that is gender fluidity
In body. In action. In beliefs. We announce and deny:
Where categorization coerced us into disguise
With any attempts of expression sought to be penalized
Acting, dancing, performing in mommy-daddy lies.
Playwrights now write your stories next lines
Acquiring experience in imagining your lives.
No hushes, no whispers, nor secrets to tell
No shout your life’s work science fiction or fairytale.
Let’s share with the world a story it’s unwilling to read
Of how all our layers are scribbled in between
And the balance of masculine and feminine is present in all human beings
And the absence of either,
only leaves us incomplete
1 Random Thought
Her fingers gridlocked by unpeaceful protestors
Opinions polarized by animals
Tongue tangled in poetry and rhetoric
America’s on my mind
Cold Brew
Aged in discrimination
Fermented in stereotypes
Infused with hints of deprivation
What’s my flavor?
Bottled by wealth
Branded by greed
Sold for profit
What am I?
Poured by need
Spilled by helplessness
Left emptied
Now broken glass in the street
What have I become?
Neighborhood Lullaby
Ambulance sounds like screamin’ woman
hollerin’ mama
belting her most horrific nightmares
Heads whip about still night winds
Lights bleed red on the skins of Black
men, women, and non-gender conforming
Blue stains skins – a brief impression of oppression.
Recessing, our skin forges remnants of the past to stay there
And 12-hour workdays force us to adhere
American Evolution
To evolve into an equitable species we have to alter the language. King no longer signifies a gender or supreme authority. That history ceases relevancy in my lifestyle. Those petticoats just don’t seem to fit my life now. I chastity lock my identity protecting it from rape now. And your pussy grabbing tactics, won’t get her to come out.
These poems appear in our third issue, “Return of the Crowd.” Purchase a copy at wedge shop.
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Sunni Hutton is a St. Louis native, educator, performance poet, activist and self-proclaimed lover. With her B.S in Education Policy from Vanderbilt's Peabody College and Master's of Education from the University of Missouri, Sunni uses her ability to write and empathize with individuals to teach workshops around the city such as Central Print's Print & Poetry Workshop. As well as motivate populations to action such as graduates of InspireSTL, Magdalene St. Louis' employees, St. Louis Public Radio's We Live Here, Green Party Rally, and Socialist Alternative's Mass March. Although she freely shares her writings, originally poetry served as a way to voice her struggles in relationships and bouts of depression. As a slam-winning poet, Sunni Hutton is currently using her platform to teach and tell her truth.