Last Call to submit Writing and/or Art for “We Will Not Be Silenced” Anthology

Midnight, Monday 15^th October is the deadline for submitting art/writing/poetry, this is an important, very timely project at a critical stage in history, your voices need to be heard!

Bruised But Not Broken, Whisper and the Roar, Indie Blu(e), and Blood Into Ink are joining forces to publish an anthology about the lived experience of sexual harassment and assault. We believe that it is more important than ever before that more voices speak out and reclaim their strength by owning their survival stories. All contributors, female and male, can submit up to three pieces of creative work- these can include; Poetry, Prose, Essay, Short Fiction, Prose, or original Artwork, but should be limited in length (under 1,000 words) considering that this is an anthology. You will be notified if your work is accepted. Please do not consider nonacceptance as any diminishment of your experience, but as with any publishing venture, we must try to fit the individual pieces together into a strong whole.

• Submission of previously published pieces is acceptable if you still own the rights to your work.
• Artwork can be submitted in black and white OR color but all artwork should be black and white compatible.
• Using a pen name or publishing anonymously is acceptable.
• All submissions should be sent to bloodintoink2017@gmail.com by midnight, Monday, October 15, 2018.

Writers and artists will retain the publishing rights to their individual submitted pieces. Indie Blu(e) will retain the rights to the collection We Will Not Be Silenced.

Pieces accepted for the Anthology may be used in whole or in part to promote the Anthology. All writers and artists will be appropriately credited in all promotional materials.

Should the royalties from sales of the Anthology exceed the costs of publishing and promoting the Collection, 70% of the royalties above these costs will be donated to organizations that support survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

 

Skins of fear

Surely this is the year

We put our skins of fear aside

They are already well flayed and comfortable to wear

And step into

Shoes that do not yet fit

But if we hold on

Shaking in place

Tempted to turn and run

Back to the oppressive we know so well

If we learn to be

This new size

These new shoes

Lending us the necessary dexterity

To skip away from excuses

Vanquish the tendency

To think we only have

One tread
One mark on this Earth

And cannot instead

Inherit the wind

We stay in that diminished moment

Growing cold though the sun shines

You have to satisfy yourself

Fill in the edges

Pick your ink

Color the world

You have to lift yourself up

Nobody else can love you as much

From the cradle to the grave

There’s one friend who won’t leave

If you learn to stop hating yourself

Movement

Is an elixir

Be it in your arms

The first time we danced

Or from your house

The last time I looked back

And as we leave pieces of ourselves

Like a photo album of torn skin

We are surely moving forward

Learning again

The lightness

Of being

Starting today

Bring might to the stage

Stop selling yourself

For pieces of flint and stone

Starting today put away childish things

Voices from the past echoing

A clamor of our downs and undoing

You’re not that clown face anymore

Not the one easily convinced you have no worth

By hellbent egotists intent on keeping you low

That you might never know

The sunlight of your parts

When arranged and strong outlast

Their fickle mercurous passions

For the fat headed go home

Take off their emperor’s clothes

Naked they see the transparency of their game

Is to their shame, their confidence relied upon

Keeping you down

Now you know

Let nobody crush your sights

There is magic in your being

They’ve been keeping quiet for fear

If you knew your worth you’d

Not need them

And their neglect of you

It’s not enough to have scraps

You are deserving

And beautiful

Now that you know

It’s impossible to be caged

By the whittling of simmering minds

Who would deny your purpose with their own agenda

Destroy the child, ruin the man

Or so it goes

Until emerging from dark the child knows

He is made of stars

Breathe deeply and have courage

Little one

For your life is equal to anyone’s

And this veil of sorrow is not your inheritance

You

Are meant

For greater purpose

Now is the time

To claim yourself

Press

The woman’s got a switch in her head

And when she wants you dead

She reaches down

Slow cat stretch

Invisible intent

Almost like

Flicking lint

And

Presses

The

Switch

Those words of promise

Count the

People who have said

The exact same thing

You must trust me

It would be pathological not to

There is no good reason

I am telling the truth

Here’s a promise

I mean what I say

I swear

Then. Then. Then.

It is a lie

What do you do

The next time

And the next?

How do you disseminate

Or decide?

I can trust this one

But not this one

You may be saying the exact same thing

Expecting me to believe

Something different

But how?

Why does one promise

Differ from another?

Why does one person’s assurance

Ring true whilst another is, hollow?

You often cannot tell

As much as you want to

As smart as you wish

You simply do not know

You’re at the mercy of those words of promise

Which means

Potentially it can keep happening

When it does, eventually something breaks and you say

Enough ! Just enough !

Then you really can’t believe anyone

You just can’t

If you can’t believe anyone then what?

Where do you go from there?

How do you get over that?

How do you move on?

Isn’t moving on surely, just being alone?

If that much mistrust has built

That many people have proven false

Of course a voice in your head says

Maybe it’s your fault

All of this

Because you’re the common denominator

You deserve this and cause it

Somehow

But you don’t know how

You just want

People to be honest

Don’t tell me things because you think I want to hear them

Don’t make promises you can’t keep

Just be honest

It’s the dishonesty I can’t take

Even as the truth can hurt

A lie will always be worse

Move

When you broke my heart

It wasn’t you who broke it

I had to give permission

All the days leading up to that fall

And the nightmares moving behind my eyes like greyscale film

In someways I’d always ended at this sharpened point

I did this to myself

It took that finality to break me apart

I held the chisel to ice

A distant memory of two people filled with joy

Was like a sore on my skin unable to heal

But I want to close my torn chest of its gape

Not see the stain of you separating me from the strength that comes from letting go

I know in time you won’t be a memory

Or even a regret

You’ll be the nothing I wish you’d always been

A cool blank space where all potential pain

Dissolves as salt on snow will leave barely trace

I don’t even wish you didn’t exist

I want to stop wishing for anything in your name

You’ve been a rot in my soul too long

It’s time to move on

Make whole

Temporary

Wrists turned 30 degrees

Pushing wharped wood

Make whole

That which has retained

Only a faint salt outline

Your chin lowered

Hand curled

Scarred table top

A drink

Coarsing liquid fire

Tremolously their bones

Knit in shape

Prepared for

The buried beckon

Of sleep

Cut the crusts off

When they say

You’re so beautiful

I’d prefer they

Get a needle

And stitch their mouths

Shut

It isn’t true

I have a horse for a jaw

A mountain for a forehead

And my eyes are

Continually watering

With their words

Some do not feel like kindness

They are broken pieces of yourself

Irreconcilable

Don’t call me that

Can’t you see beneath the layers

A scream is

Not beautiful

You only say that

Because words have become filler

For silence

And

Often for truth

But the truth is

I am an animal

My jaw continually muscular

You chew

This artificial sweetener as we

Press ourselves obedient

Sitting in high chairs at empty tables

Void of nourishment

The formal hedges of the maze, flower late this year

Too little rain save saline, and crackers, left to dampen in the tree house

I always said

Cut the crusts off

Take a plunge

Underwater you can see better when they come

Patent toes incased in skin, cramping their march

Like wooden soldiers who

Briefly lent life’s lumbering

Will grow flushed and warm

Retaining their glimmering uniforms

Dyed into the marrow of their grain

Did you see the imprint of the pillow where I have lain?

Watching for night markets among the trees

Hawking their jewels as magpie thieves

A glimmer of willow the wisp

Forfeiting glamor for real magic

Vaporized by the sound of reality

Clicking like an old boiler trying to knit her self the semblance

Of youth

Glazing the russet bleed of nightfall