Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry now meets from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery’s new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. The open mike sign-up at 6:30 p.m.

On November 30, you are encouraged to come out of the holiday weekend and attend Angelica Maria Aguilera’s feature this month. Read one of the many poems she’s read at the Stone Soup Poetry Slam and elsewhere these past few months. Her work has won her many fans in the Boston area, and hopefully you will join us this coming Monday.

 

chronic resting bitchface

CRB stands for chronic resting bitchface-
The newest heap of bullshit disguised in a joke, to tell women yet again how we are supposed to look.
You see, I’ve been carrying a pocket knife since age 11.
Where I’m from you’re guard is like your GPA-
if you’re smart,
you keep that shit up.
This look on my face, these curved lips and darted eyebrows,
mouth that is statue still as I walk, is an expression perfected over time.
My bitchface-
my bitchface is a skill.
A technique practiced for 20 years,
my bitchface is thousands of streets walked alone,
my bitchface is “try me and I’ll put a key to your throat.”
My bitchface has no friends with it, must defend itself always.
My bitchface is not sorry.
My bitchface is in a room full of men making rape jokes and is the only one not laughing.
My bitchface is tired, from walking forty extra minutes home because the streets are lit that way.
My bitchface does not want to Netflix and chill.
My bitchface smiles-
and still gets called a bitch.

Man in front of the barber shop tells me to look happy. Man in front of the barber shop wants me pretty.
No, I want to tell him pretty is too easy to hurt. Pretty is too light to take without anyone noticing, pretty puts a target on my chest. Pretty got me followed home at twelve years old, pretty got my neighborhood friend raped out in front of her house, pretty turns me into a ghost. Makes me victim, makes it my fault.

My bitchface has a lot more to worry about than looking pretty.

And here you are, telling me if I do not, twenty-four seven, contribute to your viewing pleasure I have a disorder.
It blows my mind, how are you going to say bitchface is an epidemic and not acknowledge rape? Wonder why women do not always smile. Why we do not always just pick up your compliments like free cheesecake-
for some of us a compliment has always been the hammer cocked back before the trigger,
so do not expect me not to flinch when you call me beautiful.
So no, this is not just my resting face,
this is endurance,
this is being woman,
this is sometimes the only weapon we have,
this is surviving war every day and being ready for it
again.