This poem was inspired by Norman Rockwell's portrayal of Rosie the Riveter, and the gender politics implied by the fact this muscled, less effeminate version did not become the cultural symbol we all recognize.

Rosie the Riveter is counting down the minutes

until she can scrape off the makeup hastily applied

by some government intern

          one hand smearing lead-filled blush, and the other adjusting dials

on the radio, crying out mortality counts and

advancing enemy lines

          the second world war bites into the country’s side, 

and as the oceans team with young boys’ bodies

we turn to the women.

our military machines floating on fumes,

Rosie the Riveter is born out of desperation

          women receive a battlefield promotion to

          respectable citizen

don’t mind the stains around the honorary patches they say

you are valued just as much

as the bodies we pulled these off of. 

it’s hard to say something original to the male gaze

          this amalgous roach on the shoulder

and it is not for a lack of assaults to report but rather

so many women have raised their voices that

the perpetuation of silence becomes heavy and

violently i am pushed into a prerecorded list of complaints taken

at midnight every fifth sunday of the month 

to be tossed in the filing drawer of our discontents

          i cannot keep repeating the words my grandmother spoke

          and pretend that it doesn’t make me feel small

          make me feel like i am a weight on our progress forward

as if i step on the toes of our evolution with my

gluttonously oversized requests for the space to breathe.

there are moments between places

between 5pm and 5:20

on the bus, or in front of the grocery store

or unpleasantly stretched over an afternoon

when i stand before a radio cryer a blush rubber with a stone smile 

          off of which hangs his contempt for the woman who

          went to war and left children behind or

          stayed and didn’t have any.

when i find myself here, wanting company and not caring much

for the lopsided conversation

i speak to the little one in my chest

          the one who would have wiped mud down the front of his trousers or

          hidden behind her mother’s legs

i speak to her to teach her that it is ok to be angry and

tell her why i am. 

the thing is,

          i say

it is easy for you to chant from your wide legged slouch,

“don’t fix what ain’t broke,”

feet firmly planted outside of our monasteries of straw that

have yet to be blown down by your wolf tongues

the flag outside changing on the season of your need

          women have always given everything of themselves.

when is it our time to take? 

and is it fair to assume 

you will you change the rules of the game

when we, at last, are up to bat? will the uniforms be freshly discarded, and

when their rightful owners come back from the next war, 

shall we retreat to the kitchen, anthem in our throats?

the little one smiles but

it is only because she likes to see me sing

          and it is a song

          of rebellion and a ravenous taste for justice.

at night my small companion

asks me how we got here

          for anyone else i would shrug in agreement

          with their rhetorical dismay

but i know she means it.

so i tell her

          it began in hiding.

          it began in monstrous caves, where we were banished

          by beautiful boys and their armies

it began in hunger, and thirst,

and a dozen biting heads

that had to be slashed and burned

by the hateful hero 

          it began in shame

          ours, and others’

and now it continues because we are none of these.

we reject this history as a future

we are not ashamed

and we eat when we are hungry

          from our own hands

it continues because we were always here, even camouflaged in

shades of peach and pin curls.

newspapers did not always tuck Rosie’s hair neat beneath a bandana,

and rouge her cheeks,

bend the curves in her arms to make for

quieter statements and prettier lines

the original Rosie lifted arms like grecian columns, 

and stacked them over her proud posture 

a sandwich easily held in one hand

          her appetite, her build, the empty space where her smile is not open for viewing

          it’s no wonder that she was not desirable enough to be fed to the masses

          passes underfoot

          “come join the workforce!” they call in whispered doubt

mothers stay with their children, 

there are already job shortages in the departments of  

          bedtime tuckings in and

story reading.

“come join the workforce!” they holler, 

as half of the population is already working a dozen 

in unpaid emotional labor.

hair tightly coiffed, the american housewife sighs and

asks herself what kind of creature they have created

that carries the skin of a woman; her stoic world-bearing shoulders,

and would be sent to join her sons 

ossifying in foreign ground

if it appealed more than the war waged against them at home. 

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