Category: Poetry Publisher: 2 Pens and Lint Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 52
Copyright: August 2013
Woman Steps is a book of poems and stories with a feminist slant.
Woman Steps begs to answer the question, What does it mean to be a woman?
It uses poems, prose, and flash fiction, to tell the tales of women. Some of the voices in the book are imagined, other's are from women the author knows, and some of the poems & prose are flat out confessional on the author, CJ Johnson's, part.
Themes of race, class in America, sexuality, self-love, and self-hatred, are weaved through out the book, but it is ultimately a poetic ode to feminism.
Excerpt
POEM:
What to do when you’re sinking through a professional hole...
Fucking panic. Breathe. Call your attorney.
Embrace anxiety and all its lessons.
Keep your eyes smack dab on the hole
Know it’s coming
Let your Tom’s get muddy
Watch. Careful.
As it all rifts up to your ankles
This isn’t mud we’re talking about here
It’s nutrient,
soil.
It’s pulling you down.
You two should meet face to face.
Get in their Lovely.
Call for help.
Not 9-1-1,
Sing out to your tribes-women.
You have more of them in your village
than you first thought.
They will roll out their raven braids.
Get caught up, use them.
Tug.
Catch the gumption that every strand holds.
She knows, she’s ready.
Just lift up and fight your way back,
she will shower your soul and
stomp up some Sherry wine.
She’s had her career go down in flames before.
But she rose.
Letting the blue heat of fire douse more ambition
onto her decided professional
promenade.
Now, she has you.
Keeping you in her bosom of strength.
Freak out, that’s more than expected.
Use your tribe,
cry out, and then
will your might to join hand in hand,
with your sister
Get out of quick sand
and breathe, anew.
For your life, is just beginning,
professionally.
