BAS Poetry: The Songs of Girls

Broke-Ass Stuart is now accepting poetry submissions to be featured in the BAS Poetry: Arts & Culture column. Read on to learn how to submit your 100% original work.

Written & curated by Corinne Avganim

Thank you to talented and brave Crystallee Crain (@crystalleecrain) for being the very first poet to feature new and original works on BAS Poetry. Her poem, The Song of Girls is hauntingly beautiful and honest. I send her all the snaps.

The Songs of Girls

The songs of girls with broken dreams
fall on deaf ears here.
You watch us walk and admire the sway in our hips.
Not knowing the pain the sway causes when misread.
We walk down streets named after our ancestors,
you don’t know their names and you barely can say ours.

The stories of girls with broken hearts
don’t hammer
the newspaper stands,
with the truth that must and needs to be read.
Instead you bury our pain
in between the lines of your narrative,
and wish that we accept, hope that we reject ourselves.

The depth of the pain of these girls make us women before we want to be,
it marks our hearts with a stain that grows deeper each day.
When your gaze puts us in a haze
because one stare can you take off your path – he said, she said.
The woman has no rights that a man must write to be right.

Girls with women’s eyes see the world
through battered lenses
marred with the hands of others
that never asked to see our sunshine.
Light that was taken away anytime
they thought it could be,
these eyes see right through you.
these eyes
these arms
theses legs can set us free.

Set me free girl, set me free
these women i see in my dreams hold each one of us up
they carry us along the river of redemption
we get our joy back
our smile back
and we gain wisdom without pain.

Set us free.
Let us be free.
I am free.

Snap! I hope this is the first in a flood of submissions, and look forward to what comes next from the BAS Poetry community. Stay tuned here for more, or follow us via @brokeassstuart and the hashtag #poetryisvoice.

To submit a poem to be featured, email poetry@brokeassstuart.com with your 100% original piece of work, full name, age, city, links to social media, and (optional) biographical blurb.