If My Body Could Speak

by Blythe Baird

Overview

Blythe Baird's If My Body Could Speak is a celebration of girlhood and all of its struggles and triumphs.

In poems that dig deep into sexuality, acceptance of the body, survival of trauma, and learning to love yourself in spite of everything telling you not to, Baird's voice is a rich addition to her generation. Searing, soaring, and heartbreaking, If My Body Could Speak balances the softness of femininity with the sharpness that girls are forced to become.

Includes poems such as "Girl Code 101", "When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny", and "Pocket-Sized Feminism" that have been watched by millions online.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943735471
Publisher:	Button Poetry
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Series:	Button Poetry
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	78,247
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Blythe Baird is a poet, youth educator, and actress. Her work has been featured by GLAMOUR, The Huffington Post, NEDA, EverydayFeminism, TEDx, Mic, and more. In 2016, she achieved the #1 and #4 most watched poems of the year on Button Poetry and was recognized as a finalist for the EduZine Global Young Achiever Award. In 2017, she won the ADCAN short film award in Los Angeles and took first place in the Art With Impact competition. She graduated from Hamline University in 2018 with dual degrees in Creative Writing and Women’s Studies. She lives in Minneapolis and is working on her next book.

Read an Excerpt

HIGH SCHOOL



This is how to run

a stick of Chapstick down the black boxes

on your scantron so the grading machine

skips over wrong answers.

This is how to honor roll. Hell,

this is how to National Honor Society.

This is being voted Most Likely to Marry

for Money or Talks the Most, Says

the Least for senior superlatives.

This is stepping around the kids

having panic attacks in the hallway.

This is being the kid having a panic attack

in the hallway. This is making the A

with purple half-moons stamped

under both eyes. We had to try.

This is telling the ACT supervisor

you have ADHD to get extra time.

Today, the average high school student

has the same anxiety levels as the average

1950s psychiatric patient. We know

the Pythagorean theorem by heart,

but short-circuit when anyone asks us,

How are you? We don’t know. We don’t

know. That wasn’t on the study guide.



We usually know the answer,

but rarely know ourselves.

Table of Contents

When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny 3

Theories About the Universe 7

I Didn't Always Salivate Over Skeletons 8

Before the Starving 9

Dress Code 10

High School 11

Girl Code 101 12

Blood-Rose 16

Beauty Revelation 18

When Your Therapist Asks 19

Pocket-Sized Feminism 20

Skirt Steak Girls 23

I Don't have to Forgive You 25

The Ghost who Stars in my Poetry 26

Evolution of Healing 28

Class Clown 30

Too Pissed to be Sad Anymore 31

Fossilizing Trauma 32

Concerns from a Hot-Boxed Jeep 33

Gal Pals 34

The Way I was Taught to Love 35

Marriage Diorama 38

Taxidermy 39

The Ship I Built 40

The Kindest Thing she Almost Aid 41

What I Couldn't Explain Via Text 44

Smoke 45

An Invitation 46

Lipstick 50

The Lesbian Reevaluates 51

Everything Is Fluid 54

I Lose My Voice During Sex 55

For the Rapists who called Themselves Feminists 57

Balancing 61

The Aesthetic of Rape Culture 62

To Live in the Body of a Survivor 64

More Interesting than Suffering 66

If Your Body Could Speak 68

Pruning into Art 69

Relapse 70

Eat 72

On An Empty Stomach 73

Horoscopes for Self-Doubt 74

Yet Another Rape Poem 76

Here 80