When Women Are Eels, by Lorraine Ryan

Rage, by Shary Boyle (Canada) 2022. Porcelain, underglaze, china paint, glazes, gold lustre, gold chain. 33 x 52 x 30 cm. Photo by John Jones. Courtesy of the artist.

When Women are Eels
 
We emerge from the river 
of forgetfulness and remember 
that our strength is neither ugly nor hideous. 
 
Our faces are no longer twisted 
in contortions of fear
and then chided for being grotesque. 
 
We smile with our pointed 
teeth in righteous anger 
and call it beauty. 
 
With these jaws 
we swallow restrain 
and silence. Twice. 
 
We refuse to be shamed 
into believing that your umbrella 
of misogyny gives us protection. 
 
We are new 
Neptunes bearing 
our own tridents.
 
Shiny moments come when we crawl 
from the wishing wells of myth, 
claw our way out of the dank depths 
 
of cautionary tales and if they try 
to make us mermaids from fairy stories,
so we can’t run,
 
then we’ll cut off our own legs and become eels. 
Our red rimmed eyes see the bright 
truth of your underworld 
 
and will no longer keep your secrets 
hidden in the corners 
of nightmares. 
 
On our heads we place a crown of power;  
no weighted halo of unwanted purity. 
We clothe ourselves in red sequins of rage 
 
and these gold chains no longer tie us down 
but support the heaving weight of flaming hope 
within our breasts. 
 
Red, we finally celebrate, 
is the colour of strong and muscular things. 
Blood and life. 
 
Lips that part and parse 
the silence of desires. 
An offering of transformation from shame to pride. 
 
Our wisdom is dark and slithering. Grounded.
We are not fragile figurines.
We are warriors. 
 
Lorraine Ryan 

Lorraine Ryan lives and writes from the unceded and ancestral lands of Mi’kma’ki on Ponhook Lake. She is a recently retired high school English teacher and enjoys her new gift of time writing poetry. They are the recipient of the 2026 Nova Writes Rita Joe Poetry Prize for their Poetry Suite, Demise of a Forest Model. Their work explores themes of geographical connections and familial fractures.
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