Ode to Purity Culture
Bless the kids who couldn’t sleep over at their unmarried aunt’s house because she was living in sin. Bless the aunt and uncle.
Bless the fancy promise rings and the parents who gave them and the fingers that wore them.
Bless the ones who kissed dating goodbye and the ones who kissed dates anyway.
Bless the signatures that pledged to save sex for marriage.
Bless the backseats of church vans. Bless the butts that mooned from the vans’ rear windows and from the balcony of the boys’ summer camp cabin.
Bless the youth pastors who overshared scandalous pasts. Bless their “smokin’ hot” wives.
Bless the cows that were no longer wanted because they gave their milk for free.
Bless the tongues that licked butter off someone else’s sandwich. Bless the chewed gum and the overused tape.
Bless the bodies that were visitor centers instead of temples.
Bless the pregnant teens. Bless the whispers and the side-eye mistaken for holiness.
Bless the breaker switch that would flip when one man and one woman said “I do.” Bless the couples who feared their breakers were broken.
Bless God’s perfect timing. Bless the judgement. Bless the guilt.
Bless the culture, bless the shift. Bless those who stayed and those who left.
Bless the remembering. Intentional or not, bless the forgetting.
Bless the letting go. Let go.
Columbine Blooms
We were supposed to say “no”
to sex, but “yes”
to any guy with a gun who asked
if we were Christians.
We were told that sex was good, but
only if we waited
for marriage. We were told martyrdom
was good now,
maybe the most honorable death.
One murdered girl
was held up like Mary-and-Jesus in one
untouched body
because, they said, she said “yes”
to God in the face
of death. Only years later did I learn
she wasn’t asked——
but some people, even her parents,
still repeated this story
after they learned it wasn’t true. Only
later did I learn
that Columbine is a plant that blooms
in spring with hooks
that look like eagles’ talons, with toxic
seeds and roots.
I Kissed I Kissed Dating Goodbye Goodbye
after Josh Harris’s public apology statement
great sex
is
not found in the Bible
Jesus
had
a
goodbye
kiss
and
look
what
that
did
I
listened
to
words
that
harmed
me
I wish I had
never
been
grateful for
fear
Duck Sex
In the pond before us, a male duck
mounts a female and stabs her head
under the water’s surface. We stand
holding hands, reflecting the other’s
shocked face. Is potential drowning
always part of duck sex?
We look
up the answer: not always, but often.
We read more——corkscrew vaginas,
barbed penises——there’s so much
we didn’t know.
When that absurd
politician said women’s bodies
could shut down pregnancy in cases
of rape, he must have been confusing
humans with ducks:
Female ducks
actually can send male ducks’ dicks
down the wrong path if their entry
is forced. Is this comedy? Is this
a miracle? But the duck before us
is still drowning.
When my students
tell me their stories, I’m furious
for them, but never shocked. Maybe
all species make a home in the horrors
we already know.
When the mallard
finally escapes, she hops onto the bank,
shakes her body dry. We watch her
fly away.
Katie Manning is the founding editor of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award for Tasty Other, she’s the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023) and How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022). Her writing has been featured on Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, and many other venues. She enjoys beaches, books, board games, brownies, and alliteration. For several years when she was in high school and college, she and a friend wrote each other notes as their evil alter egos! Katie’s was Katerina. They were smack talking as rival supervillains, and it probably helped them channel some young woman rage. Find Katie (and possibly Katerina) online at katiemanningpoet.com.
