Bo-Arts // Woman of the Year (Part 3)

Bo-Arts is a bi-weekly art/literature initiative. Twice a month,  Boshemia will share creative writing and visual art submissions from our readers and folks who identify as feminist to give a larger audience to emerging creatives. Our goal is to provide a platform for feminist artists to share and discuss their work.

This issue of Bo-Arts, Woman of the Year: Part 3, is the third installment of the poem-and-photography collaborations brought to you by a duo from Frederick, Maryland, USA.  Anna See-Jachowski is a poet and feminist thrilled to be working with Boshemia. Anna, her partner Matt, and their four cats live in Frederick. Emily Jessee is a young feminist creative who uses platforms like photography to portray the harshness and vulnerability of the world around her.

Artist’s Statement – from Anna

 These poems are part of a series I plan to self-publish this year, titled Woman of the Year. Each poem represents a period in a young artist’s life in which they find love, a muse, and desperately seek the meaning of that experience. The five poems are a taste of what the series will offer, and explore the deadly combination of desperation and anger felt when a lover leaves;  the lovely vulnerability of falling asleep around people you love; the ritual of hedonism in summertime; and finally, the artist’s banishment of her muse for the sake of her own recovery from trauma.

Read more of Anna’s artist’s statement here.

totem.

i stand,

a totem-

grain and paint and

an eternal joy that cannot

be weathered or defaced.

*

my core is far

from your cigarette fingers,

your touch,

from your apocalyptic

stare.

(the world used to freeze for us.

i used to believe in an all-consuming flame.)

*

i am beyond

pagan idolatry.

i am stone and wood and flesh and

i am real again.

*

no longer trapped in

junkie dream state,

no longer the grip of

spanish hands on my chest and thigh,

or your ghost

filling up my lungs so full i cannot breathe

without choking down

your whispy dancing feet.

*

i stand

in fields of native sisterhood,

my own offering.

i walk

in roads hardly paved but

lined with farmer’s markets and

saturday morning soul rituals.

i sit

in the company of my own thoughts,

tea brewed,

and remembrances organic.

*

i am not dying.

i am not dying.

*

you are just a man.

Read here for Woman of the Year: Part One and Woman of the Year: Part Two.