BODY IMAGE Poem: My Crooked Face, by Jude MacAllen Tatman

slides away from my skull
as time and tide have their fun,

blemishes and scars like barnacles
attached to the hull, the clouts to my nose

from all those years ago grow
more pronounced in gravity’s throes.

fat and feeble, my feet have foundered;
if i were a horse at this late hour

i’d be taken behind the shed, a pat
on the withers, then shot in the head.

dark auburn hair has faded to a whiter shade
pale, boyish charms with roguish good looks

i used to betray have gone, what is there to say?
what you fell in love with has seen better days

all of those tropes washed away,
since you gave away a hopeful heart,

with that first embrace, i stole a part
of you, never to be restored.

So, off to hell with all the other good intentions
that paved the road once tread— believe me

when i say, it was true, i was never that clever
or sly, to tell a lie, when it was said, given all

the demons, desires, dysfunctions, hauntings
cursed and hurt, broken inside a void

i could never find a way to fill, didn’t know
how to love you or me, hurtful to us both

but of course, more to you. and i regret
all the years once i withdrew, the fallen tears,

i knew i was by god damned;
didn’t want you to go through this hell with me.

perhaps that’s why I left your life way back when;
i wanted your memory of me

to be as beautiful
as my reminiscences of you.

* * *

femalefilmfestival's avatar

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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