Visage – Spring/Summer 2023

SPRING/SUMMER 2023
PHOENIX
THE GENDER AGENDA
Emmanuella Adewole
So this it.
The final page.
The final sentence.
Our coming of age.
Our independence.
And isn’t it just beautiful?
But won’t you spread your
wings?
It’s just an exam way.
A full stop,
a multiple choice answer box;
The first of multiple choices we
will soon have to make.
Of which school or which
accommodation,
on how we will spend the next
chapter of our lives,
learning to spend real money
and real time with each
other.
No longer sitting in uniform idle
lines,
Sing hymns or walking hand in
hand –
But won’t you spread your
wings?
You may be looking forward to,
a summer in the sun
burning the midnight candle,
in the interest of future fun.
We will no longer stand
shoulder to shoulder for
whole school photos
and instead will rub shoulders in
the workforce.
But won’t you spread your
wings?
You’ve kept ‘all your limbs inside
the cart at all times’
for so long,
that you’ve forgotten how to fly.
You’ve measured yourself up
with another man’s metre rule
and it’s made you feel down
about all the things you did in
school.
You still have things that you
wish you had said or did,
that dream that you’ve held in
your heart since you were
a kid.
It’s just too far out of your
reach,
but did you know that you can
fly?
You may have grown
up in a chicken’s coup
but you have an eagle’s
wings,
if only you could see the things
that I see from my bird’s eye
cause when I see you, I cannot
deny
I see potential.
But won’t you spread your
wings?
Won’t raise both hands at either
side
and show the world what it
truly means to be a ‘free’?
Standing here in front of me,
are individuals teeming with
promise:
Engineers, artists, doctors,
scientists, lawyers, directors,
mathematicians, actors,
writers, philosophers.
All in one place for the very last
time.
So won’t you spread your wings?
Cause my God you’ve seen a
swimming pool burn down,
you can sure as hell see
phoenix rise from its ashes.
We have been cooped up for far
too long,
so won’t you spread your wings?
I see you biting your
tongue,
so much you’ve grown
accustomed
to the taste of your own
blood.
You’ve curled into yourself.
You’re full of more compressed
air than a can of coke,
weighed down by the heavy
words that you never spoke.
You’re a liar.
Not in the way liars usually are,
you lie to yourself
every day you refuse to do what
you were born to do.
Did you know that you were
born to fly?
Have you ever seen a flock of
birds,
high in the sky,
The way they seem to form an
arrow pointing towards new
heights?
Of greener pastures, new
dangers
and feats to overcome
but you know you’ll never make
it if you don’t run.
Run towards the you that you
want to become.
Don’t run ‘pretty’ run ugly,
let sweat drip down your
temples
and the wind rush past your
face,
until you are flushed and out of
breath
and your legs turn to jelly,
until you begin to feel
weightless
and you are walking on air.
Forget the looks and the stares,
who cares,
they are simply bird watching
because the validation of others
means nothing
if you cannot validate yourself.
We may not cross paths again,
as we criss-cross the
hopscotch of life like we did
when we were
little.
But our future selves are waiting
for us
and I cannot wait to meet them.
So this is it.
The first page,
the first sentence,
our coming of age,
Our independence.
Congrats! You’ve finally done it,
you’re flying,
and isn’t it just beautiful.
Is Gender an identity? This poem explores
the theme of justice or rather the lack
thereof. It explores the importance of
defining your own identity rather than
succumbing to the definition of identity
that mankind has assigned to us.
Princess Longe
What is the difference between him and her?
From birth, taking our first steps into this world,
like cookie dough, shaped, moulded; all part of the
same cut.
Made to fit a certain expectation,
yet, still in a situation,
where there are certain limitations.
Because I am a girl, and you are not.
Your skirt’s too short, your top, too tight,
what about his trousers, the top almost scraping
the backs of his knees!
That dress code, is just about right.
She dresses to impress. No, I disagree.
We have this role to fulfil as women.
No! I disagree.
We, are the weaker identity. I disagree.
Strings hang us from our shoulder joints from
youth,
to dance as society tells us,
forced into a trance because society is our
puppeteer.
The man, the boy.
He can’t feel things, or at least show them
because,
that is not what he does.
For society will see him as otherwise
But we are not dancers, we move as panthers.
We’ll take our chance, and make our advance,
sever the strings. To take a stance.
Videos impersonate me. What I look like,
how I act.
You think you have the slightest clue,
But really it’s you who’s in the blue.
I touch my hair and you think, ‘she’s trying
to flirt’.
You see, these are the stereotypes that
really hurt.
But they act as simple obstacles to our glory.
Because you, are just characters in our story.
Why can’t we have equal opportunities?
Why is a woman’s promotion such an extremity?
To start it off with gender inequality is the
difference in status, power and prestige,
that you and I; he and she have in society.
When we ask, they say ‘It just is.’
‘It just is.’
It is gender injustice.
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