The Other Option by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko | Poems Rethabile Likes

The Other Option

by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

No
No thank you No thank you     No thank you!
Just no
Just not feeling it
Just not
not     not not
no     No!     NO!!

What part of no     DON'T you understand?
N     O
Please remove your hand
Please remove your hand
No
None of that     None     Nada
Nada thing     Nothing

Silence     The Unspoken     The Refusal
Not     the UN-Lived
Not     the     i couldn't care less
Not     the silence of indifference or recusal
nor the conspiracy of consent
Not the absence of yes
But no     Just no

No to submission
No is not     an omission
an act of contrition
Yes is not my religion
I don't need your permission

I will not submi
I will not commit
to yes
I confess     I am human
a    work of fiction
a     contradiction
No does not make me less
I say no to yes

Just yes     to no
No        to the enslavery of yes
the submissive acceptance
the demand and expectation
the sublimation     of truth and desire
I've burned those bridges
I set my own house on fire
and I escaped

I've been beaten kidnapped raped
The rapists     the manipulators     the liars
the mistakes…they are now erased    
all in my head of course     (let's call it a gift… OK?)
I will not be led     down that path anymore
I will impeach and abort     the shoulds and what ifs
It wasn't supposed to happen like this

I am the protest    the resistance    the empowerment
of all the burning stars in the sky     you CANNOT see
I am the singing meteor
ghosting all the no-shows
repeat after me     repeat after me
I am not past tense
I am the nonsense of sense
I am just left of right
I won't take back the night

I am the Visibly invisible
I am the other option
I am the dark the shines
the light

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Poet: @AntoniaAlexandraKlimenko
Bio: @FullBio
Online: @SpokenWordParis
Book(s): @ThriftBooks

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Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London—publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few. After his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish.

A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. She has been a featured guest at Shakespeare & Company, as well as performed or read in other literary venues in the City of Light and elsewhere.

Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France), Jazz and Literature and Maintenant: Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg was a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Poet in Residence.

Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books. Her selected poems The Looking Glass is now available.