Woman Warrior, by Caesar Kent

Jia Lu, Woman Warrior, oil on canvas, 52 x 52 inches. © Jia Lu 2017. Used with permission. Click image to visit artist's site.

Woman Warrior

I'm still waiting
  for a girl
    who looks like a woman
       I saw in a painting
         in a gallery
           that closed
             when I was 17.

Her name was
            Woman Warrior,
and she adopted the features
             of her Chinese Mother
but it wasn't the way she
              looked,
it was the way she
              looked
that made me feel
  less alone
    for ten minutes
      several times a week.

If I had a house
      and a job
      and $10,000 to burn
  she would have been mine.
It was the first time
  I had a way of measuring
     the reasons I could not
        be with someone.

I have never forgiven her for this.

Caesar Kent

Caesar Kent is a semi-nomadic California poet, living around the Bay Area and dividing his time between open mic stages, dive bars, and clouds.He also sits on board of directors for Poetry Center San Jose, acts as co-editor for the literary magazine, Caesura, and studies English at UC Berkeley.