C. KUBASTA

Things I Would Tell a Daughter: A Poetics

If you sit outside in the dark long enough, something sounds larger & closer than it is.

To navigate a crowd, lower your shoulders but keep your elbows out.

It is better to be interesting than pretty.

You will either be sexualized, or a mother; beyond this is a space unchartered.

It is always about power but it should never be about power.

Stay attuned to groups of women, their intimate meteorologies.

Success arrives in the guise of your first stalker.

On old maps, cartographers wrote/may have written “Here there be monsters.” Or drawn
images of monstrous things, their imaginations limited to versions of the known world.

we imagine this a common practice : we myth-make this fiction into fact

(Most of these maps were just Drawing-Room Pretties, for hanging on walls – never meant for
navigation.)

Stay attuned to groups of women: the Drawing-Room Pretties, the Monstrous-Who-Are-
Versions-of-the-Known-World. Look for the door beyond the door beyond the door.

Sound so large & close no one will sit out in the dark.

C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. Her most recent book is the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House, 2020). Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet