Name: This Is Your Anthem
Duration: P00H02M12S
Description: You are more than just the scars that shaped you.

This Is Your Anthem

from Seaglass Strange by Red O'Hare

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about

You are more than just the scars that shaped you.

lyrics

To so many
you will only ever be
what they can take from you.
They will hold your face in their hands
but be blind to the curve of your cheek.
They will gather
your moon-stained hopes
your unkissed mouth
and make a cadaver of you.

Pride will not fill your heart or belly
but it will help you stand strong
when your spine splits in sorrow
when your bones fray with rage.
It will sharpen your teeth
on a whetstone
of the righteous.
It will sustain you
for a time.

Anger, it will keep you warm.
A fire in your wrists and throat,
but you will burn, child
so square your shoulders now.
Make your body all right angles
your hips turned quiet fury.
Within you heaves
an entire ocean.

So drown all the sailors
made fearless by fair winds,
ungrateful for the blessing
of all your calm seas;
They forgot
you are salty and wild.
Tear their boats from stem to stern.
Remind them of the pull of tides
and all the ships
you sank in storms.

Your lips are twin pistols.
Turn your tongue into the trigger.
Speak your gunpowder truth
and then hear mine:
You are so much more
than what you are to someone else.
You are so much more
than just the scars that shaped you.
You are more than the days
you flailed in grief
you are more than the nights
you failed relief.
You are more than your body
and the hands that bruised it.
You are more than your care
and those who abused it.

Child, your mouth
is a fractious fire,
your hope
is an unending ocean.
They go on and on
like you
on and on
like you
like you
they go on.

credits

from Seaglass Strange, released June 7, 2019

license

about

Red O'Hare Portland, Oregon

Red O'Hare is a Ashkenazi Jewish American poet from Oakland, California where she featured twice with Bay Area Generations. A product of Presbyterian missionaries from the Belgian Congo and Eastern European carny folk, Red has been performing poetry for 20 years. She works in a bakery and is compiling a list of people who want her dead. ... more