There’s a consistent theme stretching across Nicole Lyons’ “I Am a World of Uncertainties Disguised as a Girl”. It is felt from the opening poem, “The Next Big Thing”, in which the Canadian native states,

 “Darling, I see you,
all twenty years of you,
and I will invite you to my table,
set the prettiest place for you,
to come back to me,
after you have gagged on life,
wiped your mouth
and asked for a second fucking helping”.

This feeling of violation, the siren song that has driven the #MeToo movement this last year from rock slides into a cultural avalanche, permeates and dominates every page of Girl. Even when Lyons is at her most empathetic and forgiving, gentle reminders that women still face immense challenges to be accepted in what was formerly a man’s world accompany. And at her most biting, she never abandons the readers in her…

Shall I ascend to solitude,
eagle high
enough to spy
myself?
Put my metal parts to practice, and
train my reason to speak in
comprehensive sentences?

I presently think in blinks of
tainted photographs
flicking—
our lives a fucking flip-book filled with phony animation, as
though we’ve never been anything more than a
pair of paper dolls pretending to breathe.

The surgeon lied. I am not bionic;
should’ve demanded a synthetic heart
instead.
Mine is afflicted with fissures, and
I feel the blood leaching like so many earthworms
smothering my organs.

My body is not a temple, but a churchyard—
your burial ground, and there’s no space reserved for
me. So ascend I shall,
eagle high
enough…

Kindra M. Austin is an indie author (her books can be found here), a founding member of Indie Blu(e), and a writer/managing editor at Sudden Denouement, Blood Into Ink, and Whisper and the…