Fiona Apple, 41

1 Minute Read Time

Photo by Secret Travel Guide on Unsplash

Getting older, you never got old.
A gold mine of girl: doe-eyed, sold.

In front of the shutter’s clicking, 
you did what he said, lens-fucking, 
muttering No hope for women.

Piano to camera-ready, plucked at eighteen, 
barely steady, heavy with mood.

Suddenly, you made scarce, laid low.
Suddenly, a surprise: you arrived
again, new world, sullen girls telling tales.

Here’s what they never knew:
you were #MeToo before its time,

a million girls clinging and climbing 
a rope they barely knew you threw. 
You grew. Now new hope for women.

No more downward slope, no resorting
to self-hurt, believing women are the hope

that wasn’t. You’re 41, still not done
with confessions, bad impressions, so witchy, 
crazy, onstage with hair in a scrunchie, no longer

dazed and wanton on film. Now called touched, 
tired, worn. Still beautiful, still wan.




Once, a man caused you harm, wound, fracture, 
alarm. Unheard, you didn’t shut down; howled 
open the fissure further, sang disaster.

Once, you were a girl, sorry she broke a boy 
just because she could. But now it feels good.

Jessica Piazza

is the author of three poetry collections: Interrobang, This is not a sky, and Obliterations (with Heather Aimee O’Neill), as well as the children’s book Olivia Otter Builds Her Raft. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jessica now lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches at the University of Southern California. She co-founded Bat City Review (Austin, TX) and Gold Line Press (Los Angeles, CA), and curates Poetry Has Value, which focuses on the intersections of poetry, money and worth. She is the recipient of the Amy Clampitt residency and is working on a new poetry collection and a novel. Her poems have most recently appeared in Best American Poetry, Smartish Pace and 32 Poems.

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