Gen X Girls Ghazal
By M.R. Mandell
after Patricia Smith
We woke ourselves up, brushed our own hair, cooked our own dinners, tucked
our sisters into bed. We were thirty at the age of thirteen. We needed nobody.
Vogued to Madonna. Leather jackets, tattooed midriffs, clove cigarettes slipping
off our lips, kissing girls under neon, electrifying every part of our bodies.
Boys drooled over our breasts, slid fingers up our lace miniskirts. Our curves made
them squirm. Our bodies owned their minds, but they said we owed them our bodies.
When we didn’t give in, they dropped roofies in our cups. Raped us, left us for dead,
blamed our bare skin and pulsing hips. We guilty bodies.
They’re old boys now, terrified of who we are, what we have become, what we have won. Governor of Michigan. Vice President of the United States. Badass brains. Badass bodies.
Oh, Rebecca, step down from your self-built pedestal. Stop talkin’ ‘bout the past.
Get off your ass. Gen X girls, this is our calling. We fight. We vote. Cue bodies!
M.R. Mandell (she/her) is a poet based in Los Angeles. You can find her words in The McNeese Review, Weekly Humorist, Maudlin House, Writers Resist, Stanchion, HAD, and others. She is the author of the chapbook, Don’t Worry About Me, (Bottlecap Press) and Lost Girls, forthcoming September 2025 (Finishing Line Press).
Photo credit: Lorie Shaull via a Creative Commons License.
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