Friday, October 23, 2026: Linda M. Crate's "how many deaths is enough?"

 

how many deaths is enough?

i always rise from the ashes,

but maybe i am tired of

all the funerals

of every version of me

i couldn’t keep;

see glimpses of them in

my memories—

feel like a mirror whose

glass needs shattered

in order to feel

whole again,

this new glass just doesn’t

reveal things i want to see;

i am tired of all the anger and all

the pain and the sadness

just want to scoop it out of me like

pumpkin guts from a jack-o-lantern—

the exhausting thing of being

a phoenix is not my capacity to

endure,

but simply being expected to;

how many deaths is enough?

i want to be as happy

as my mother wants me to be.

© Linda M. Crate

Bio: Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has eighteen published chapbooks the latest being: crescent moon (Fae Corps Publishing, July 2026).

Friday, September 30, 2022: Linda M. Crate's "Feminine, Not Fragile"

i was called a succubus

because

i enjoy sex,

but why do women 

have to be quiet about 

their wants and their desires?

no one has ever appreciated

my fire, my ambition, my feral wilds;

they want the pretty painted face

without the chore of having to know

me or having to respect me and my magic—

that is not something i will ever entertain,

because i am worth loving in every season

of me;

won't hide my horns or thorns or talons

simply because they scare you

because they're every bit as much a part of me

as the trees, the flowers, and the seas—

they want us feminine and fragile,

i am feminine but i won't break;

know my magic and my voice and i won't

surrender my power nor submit it

to any.

© 2022 Linda. M. Crate

Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks, the latest being Hecate's Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021). 

A social media link: https://www.facebook.com/Linda-M-Crate-129813357119547

Friday, May 13, 2022: Linda Crate's poem "We Owe You Nothing For Existing"

 you don't appreciate the strength,

the beauty, the power, and the magic

of women; and you want to demand

respect?

society, go home, you must be drunk;

respect is earned not simply given

and you've done nothing to make me 

respect you or your opinions—

always a woman is too this or too little that,

she can never be enough as herself;

too fat or too thin or too smart or too daft,

she's too creative or not creative enough,

too pretty or not pretty enough to pay her rent

in this world,

too hairy or she doesn't have enough hair;

so many have starved themselves and killed their

own spirits trying to become a perfect woman

for you—

i'll tell you something maybe you didn't know,

women are women as they are and who they are;

they don't need your approval or your endorsements to

be who they are but they should have your support

if you want our magic and our strength and our power

to protect you and to encourage you and to heal you

because we owe you nothing for existing.

© 2022 linda m. crate

Bio: Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks, the latest being Hecate's Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021). 

 

A social media link: https://www.facebook.com/Linda-M-Crate-129813357119547/

Women's History Month: Saturday, March 13, 2021: Linda M Crate's poem "now i've seen your face"

 

now i’ve seen your face

 

i'm not your voodoo doll,

no more pins and needles;

i am not your marionette

won't pull on my strings—

too long you were a flower

in the secret garden of my heart,

and i tend to hold onto too long

so i decided it was time to

weed the garden;

i don't regret leaving behind the

dead plant of you and i

no amount of water would revive

something already withered and gone—

you may see in me the flowers

of demeter,

but i am persephone;

delicate like a flower

yet powerful as an ocean

with both light and darkness

i have a healthy appreciation for everything

beautiful even the things that people discard—

i guess that's why sometimes i cannot

distinguish between man and monster,

but now that i have seen your true face;

you're not welcome in my kingdom.

 © 2021 Linda M. Crate

Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has seven published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017),  splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), and the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), and two micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018) and moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). She also has three full-length poetry collections, the latest being Mythology of My Bones (Cyberwit, August 2020).