#cade leebron

[crippleprophet]

me re-reading fork theory (link) for the thirtieth time: oh cade leebron we’re really in it now

[campgender]

“Imagine that you wake up in the morning and I hand you twenty-five very sharp forks. Every time you say something ableist to me, I take a fork away from you. When you are all out of forks, each ableist thing you say means I get to stab you really hard with a fork, and leave it stuck in your skin. If you’re paying attention, you might notice that I am cripping your body, I am making it unwhole. [...] You are still talking. And so I take the last fork, and I shove it down your throat. This is called fork theory and it’s about how angry I am.” —Fork Theory by Cade Leebron

[ID: Two photos of Mac’s arm taken from eir bed in low lighting. Both are grainy with a slightly blue filter. 1: Mac's arm outstretched with a tattoo from slightly below eir wrist to eir elbow. A poster on the wall says NO SPOONS with a skull and crossbones made with spoons instead of bones. 2: A close-up of the tattoo; it's a stylized and shaded fork in black and white with the words "I am not a reason to die" in typewriter font near eir elbow. End ID.]

[yespoetry]

Cade Leebron: #MeToo Series

CURB YOUR SUPPOSED ENTHUSIASM

 In my post-you world, I am often here:

at some busy intersection in my

city, a place you’ve never been. Cheap beer

cans are floating in yards, the new leaves fly

into my airspace. In my post-you world,

traffic looks appealing. Like I could spin

into cars, leave that figurative girl

I’m still hoping to rescue from within

your clutches, your tight grasp. As if you are

a cartoon villain. I am a cartoon

raped girl, living post-traumatic. Thus far

that name-thing-feeling is hard to shake. Moon

-rise illuminates each car’s hot mouth, I

am six years good at not crawling inside. 

DIVIDE

 My ex-boyfriend takes a screwdriver to

my sleeping head, twists. Morning after, his

friends tell me run. They hand me five dollars.

But I mirror no holes. What can money do?

His hands are always so careful. In the car,

his mother is unsurprised by his use of tools.

He should never get married. We fill comical

water bottles at her place, take a trip through

mountains. A wolf births babies in a cave, pink

and new, looking as we do. She and I cut plastic

netting away from them so they can grow.

They reach our size in minutes. She says it

again, he should never get married. Yes,

of course. This is a dream. But for three

years I felt it. Like while I slept, he cut

into me just to see how much

he might like it.

 ASS THEORY

 When you call me a piece of ass, I guess

what you mean is you think you can scratch

off another patch of dull skin from your

 scratch-off map of all the fuckable ass to be

found in this world. I think it’s gotta be red

underneath. Of course you can never hope

 to attain a full uncovered ass map, no man

has the resources for that thorough of an ass

quest. I don’t mean butt stuff, though I’m pretty

 sure you’re a little bit into that. I’m talking

ass figurative, list of women who you’d be down

to put your dick in. They have to fit a lot of

 criteria. Baby, you should put that nickel away.

I can’t reveal any red you haven’t seen, even if

you fuck me through this whole cold season. 

  Cade Leebron lives in Columbus, Ohio. She has an MFA from The Ohio State University, where she served as an editor at The Journal. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Electric Literature, The Establishment, and elsewhere. She can be found online at www.mslifeisbestlife.com or on Twitter @CadeyLadey 

[yespoetry]

Cade Leebron: #NotTrump Series

ELECTION DISPATCH

Greetings to my ladyfriends from the Soviet-style Hillary poster industriously peeling itself off my wall. And once more for the people in the front: if you are neutral in situations you have chosen. The most beautiful women are skilled at silence, the most powerful men have pre-existing grabby hands. A woman’s place is the house and the oven and the Senate. The frat party, the open window. In our power-free blizzard times, we joked ourselves into the USSR, as tradition instructed. It must have beenthe buzzing generator, the bread line stretching across our Connecticut campus, apricots from Rosh Hashanah still in my most beautiful pockets, no kidding. A disabled man gunned down twenty children nearby and every song became a song I fucking hate. A refund on that political science degree please, you people in the front? To my ladyfriends and neighbors, the news is nothing, an able white man with a gun or our presidency in hand is not of interest, a disabled woman is only crawling poorly. In the early blizzard, in the blackout, in my bed in late afternoon, in a fake USSR, I am practicing my skills. Trust me ladyfriends when I say I am finding this political science degree very useful. I am peeling back the poster, trying to find pre-existing skin which yes, can only crawl poorly, but skin anyway, that once lived underneath. 

Cade Leebron is currently earning her MFA at The Ohio State University, where she serves as Online & Art Editor at The Journal. Her work has been published in Electric Literature, The Boiler, The Deaf Poets Society, and elsewhere. She recently founded the site www.usforpresident.org, and can be found online at www.mslifeisbestlife.com, or on Twitter @CadeyLadey