At first it was just for fun
like playing dress up.

I’d only wear the antlers at home-
prance around our bedroom.

One day I decided to wear them to dinner;
you didn’t think it was fun anymore.

Your cheeks flamed and you wouldn’t
sit next to me at the bar.

Still, I liked the way it felt.
I was taller, like an Amazon.

I liked the way everyone looked at me,
probably thinking I had the balls now.

It wasn’t a game anymore.
This was who I wanted to be and

you always said, in America, I can be anything, right?
But you were drunk on your own ideals.

Waving your torch in the air,
hiding behind your layers of green robes.

Listen, goddess of freedom,
we still have so far to go.

But I was born with my eyes open,
with a mortar and pestle in my hands

to pound at the earth,
so I did.

 

Hannah Wagner is a resident of Salem, Massachusetts. She graduated from Salem State University. She is also an actor and can be seen in many productions across the North Shore. Her work has been featured in The Broke Bohemian, Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment, Door is a Jar, Soundings East, Twyckenham Notes, Still Point Quarterly, Incessant Pipe, Sweet A Literary Confection and others.