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      April 8, 2018The Choicest PartsJhoanna Belfer

      Can I still say me too if I went willing
      into the car, the darkest corner,
       
      crawled eager into the back seat,
      laid myself bare on the mattress,
       
      the sheets already twisted
      and smelling? Even with my eyes
       
      flung up and wide into the eaves
      of the house, the crevices
       
      of the borrowed car,
      disembodied even into stars
       
      and sun, indiscriminate moon,
      I saw, saw the unswept floor, the dirty
       
      wrappers, the days-old litter
      of empty food containers
       
      and drunk-from cups, crusted
      with other women’s lips.
       
      But I was taught to offer up
      the choicest parts, pass the plate
       
      glistening with meat, say
      here, here.

      from Poets Respond

      Jhoanna Belfer

      “I’d just read Rebecca Solnit’s book of essays, Men Explain Things to Me, the week before, and then heard about the Stormy Daniels interview with Anderson Cooper, and then saw this piece on the question of what “entirely consensual” might mean, all the while thinking of my own experiences as a Filipino-American woman whose culture and family values always taught me to put the other person, especially men, before myself and my needs/wants. So I got to thinking about all those questionable, if not outright abusive, moments that happen in a woman’s or young girl’s life that occur in part because of societal or familial conditioning that tells us to be nice, strive to gain others’ good opinion, be pretty/sexy/appealing, on and on, which I just don’t think most men ever think about. Or at least not to the point that they would allow themselves to get into situations where they may be abused or harassed or assaulted.”

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