Hidden in Plain Sight | Jacob Henretta
Mother Nature
By Bobbi Newsome
She is Forgotten.
She is bone & keratin chewed to dust.
She is tortoiseshell & shark fin & crab claw dipped in butter.
She is haloed goldenrod peeking over the hill of each breast & the gorge in between
kudzu sprouting from eyebrow, jaw, & popliteal
lionfish sucking crumbs bare from rib-coral reef
endemic blue carpenter bee pollinating
rubus niveus at the navel of the world.
She is Eden,
perfectly wild in the dawn of it all
fire, seeds, mud, some unlucky furs
Eve’s apple, & full of tricks.
She is wrong-colored gems ripped from closed off womb & turned ornament
body cracked tectonic, fracked with tremors
miasma hacked from bend of diaphragm
hastily appeased with fineness of her own making.
She is Neglected.
chopped & burned away for your viewing pleasure
barren seas & dead-zones &
unroamed prairie plains.
She is acid dripping from the sky, from clouds puffed with poison
runoff slicked from oily skin
great garbage patch rashes
toxic soil killing crops.
She is feral bitch with six litters & long teats fighting off a rabid thing with mange
first turtle hatchling down seagull’s throat
cichlid fry swallowed by starving maw
braconid wasps under hornworm’s skin.
She is Mother
created on the First Day & festering since the Sixth
since she was put in man’s dominion
Genesis of heaven, earth, & sea
we called nature woman, so
She is made to be plundered.
Ecofeminism is a philosophy which critiques patriarchal structures and links the oppression of women to the exploitation of nature. This is evident in the fact that words used to degrade women often draw on elements of the wilderness: vixen, cow, catty, shrew, wild… the list goes on. Male-dominated societies treat both women and the environment as resources to be controlled. This piece uses this harmful view to generate disgust and therefore promote the philosophy of ecofeminism.
Bobbi Newsome is a performance poet in her Senior year at Susquehanna University. She’s majoring in Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing with double minors and she serves as the Historian of THE Black Student Union. She loves language, food, and music, and often draws inspiration for her writing from her favorite songs. Ideally, Bobbi wants to live in a small house filled with plants and tea, but in light of capitalism, she’ll settle for a job surrounded by literature; her first love.