This poem explores oranges as a metaphor for the hope I associate with the feminist movement. To me, being a feminist, and specifically a feminist writer, is all about noticing the joy and love that’s all around me and using it as motivation to continue fighting for a better world. When everything seems hopeless, it’s hard to find the point of fighting back. However, writing helps us come together and notice the things and people that are always going to be worth fighting for. 

prologue in the way of citrus 

february, in my house, means oranges.  

a big crate of sunkissed oranges from the heart of florida.  

they arrive in the mail from my grandparents, like dozens of tiny suns 

on my front porch.  

the juice runs down my wrists, the pungent citrus smell lingering, but i don’t mind. 

i hesitate to wash away the sticky sweetness; the february oranges are a  

gift to sustain us until summer. 

how to be a feminist poet  

step one.  

step one is february.  

february before the oranges come; february when you’re so tired of fighting off the cold that always seems to sneak its way in anyway; february when you can see the sun—it’s right there—yet the warmth never comes.  

step one is the last day you open your front door and see only the muddy footprints on the doormat. when you’re starting to lose hope and forget what summer tastes like, not knowing tomorrow brings sweetness.  

step one is to get angry.  

you’ve got to find that thing that makes your heart beat faster, the thing you’ll fight like hell for. 

and that’s when you pick up a pen.  

because what they don’t tell you is that to be  

a feminist poet is to write your own oranges.  

step two.  

open your eyes.  

because there’s something beautiful about girlhood—personhood— 

because there’s the women hyping each other up under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the bathroom mirror; and there’s the young child helping a man who just spilled his lemons on the crowded street and is holding back tears because he just needed something to go right today; and there’s the tired looking daughter buying blood red oranges from the corner bodega to bring to her mother, who she fears is starting to lose hope.  

the hidden humanity. it’s there, in the whispered conversations, in the basement secondhand shops, in the produce shelves at mom and pop corner stores. 

that’s where, if you’re not looking too closely, you might find some poetry. 

it’s in the song lyrics scribbled in sketchbooks, and the tilt of strangers’ smiles. the tantalizing moment in a song, the pause right before the beat drops where your heart goes what if.  

true, it’s the anger. the grief. the hopeless despair.  

but it’s also the magic.  

the mid february oranges.  

the poetry that lives inside people and lies in the margins of our shared humanity.  

step three.  

you’ve got to dig your fingernails in, all the way  

past the rind 

until juice runs down your arms and summer begins 

you’ve got to share your words with the world  

because isn’t it just a little magic  

the way there are finite words 

yet infinite ways of arranging them 

and isn’t it just a little magic  

how the unique way i write my words 

can make people feel