Featured Poet SS 2019
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018).
my rage burns bright
sometimes i struggle with my darkness, i don’t want it to consume me, but my rage burns bright; rage for the teachers that failed me, the friends that back-stabbed me, the people who used me, my emotionally abusive stepfather, my never there mother always working, the boy that tried to rape me when i was a girl, the man who forced me to touch his dick, every guy who thought to make some sexual joke toward me or any unwanted advance, the boy who hit me with a pool stick in the crotch, the guy who tried to force me to love him because he loved me, the mentally disabled guy who didn’t want to take no for an answer, and everyone who’s treated me like a cockroach that they’d like to rip the wings from; we’ll see how brave you all are when i fly—when i reach the pinnacle of my success then we’ll see which of you has anything to say about me, but i doubt you’ll ever be honest; not even to yourselves and i don’t need your approval—i am me, and there is a beauty and power in that even if you fail to recognize and see me as i am; there is nothing i ought to be that i am not.
To view more of Linda’s work from this issue pick up a copy.