Featured Poet: Elly Gault

watch me take up space

i do not become every day,
i am always filling and falling.
but soon i will pop into life before your eyes, a pile of primary colours into a bouncy castle,
an impenetrable fortress of being.

i am not shouting but your hands are in your ears,
that’s fine,
i will raise the volume so you have something to live for,
something to silently fume about
existence out of these constructed confines

no pin can pop me,
no lid can stop me,
no pity/contempt/politeness will push me into patriarchal cage,
you can’t bind me into theories of socially-accepted rage,
i will boycott liberal tolerance and its festering nazi face,
watch me take up space-

if you were truly concerned with the growth of my ontology you would not make assumptions of my mind from my body,
nor my body from my mind,
they have no separate existence,
even you and i are intertwined.

to exist is to influence culture,
but you have made yourselves parasites,
status-stealing vultures,
existing to prey upon identity,
obsessed with crumbling forms of hierarchy,
not me,

i want to unlearn,
this soft and slaving nature.
so first,
watch me take up space