I was unexpectedly contacted last year by a charming young woman who told me she really loved my work — particularly my poem, “Librarian.” She also asked very sweetly if I had any other poems or essays of mine that I might send along to her…because she was doing her finals project on me in her English class.

Now, I’m not sure if you fully understood the completely outrageous and unbelievable nature of what I just said:

She was doing her finals project on me in her English class.

HA!

For her finals project, she needed to explain the theme, purpose, structure, metaphor, word choice, rhythm, and sound devices of my writing…and its context in American culture and history.

Knitter PLEASE. I am the daughter of criminals, courtesans, cocksmen, and carnies. I am a high-school dropout. I come from a rambling, felonious, working-class family of eleven brilliant, hilarious children, several of whom are dead, addicted, incarcerated, or crazy. I’m a shitkicker and a thief. At the age when most kids are learning to tie their own shoelaces, I could unload a handgun as big as my fucking arm with deadly precision. I like Nancy Grace, demolition derby, Bob’s Big Boy, Supercuts, and watching a really good freeway chase on TV. Every morning, I liberally mist Jean Nate drugstore bodyspray onto my pulsepoints and onto my cooter. I am from Fresno, for chrissake.

I wrote back thanking her for her lovely letter, and sent along a bit more of my work. As an old broad who NEVER misses the opportunity to spout about GIRL POWER, I added that if I, as a woman, have learned one single goddamned thing in my dangerously improbable existence, it is that ANYTHING is possible. The mere fact that I am STILL ALIVE, RELATIVELY SANE, and NOT MAKING MY LIVING FLAT ON MY BACK FAT is inarguable proof of that. I also offered her the advice that I give to every young woman I meet who is just beginning her journey in this place:

Fear NOTHING. Fear NO ONE. Know that you are POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE — NOW. Not twenty years from now. RIGHT NOW. Every single day of your life, wake up, look in the mirror, behold your UTTER PERFECTION, throw back your head, belly laugh, and go out into the world and take what is yours — because it’s ALL YOURS.

She wrote back that she had printed up my letter and hung it on the mirror in her bedroom…so that not a single day would pass where she would not think of my words and use them to help guide her along her way.

I don’t think I have ever been more genuinely honored, humbled, or blown-away by anything in my entire life.

KILL IT, Little Sister.

(Wee Feral Gunslinger Girl brilliantly done in blue ballpoint ink on a book tile by one of my favorite motherfucking artists on the planet, Gabriel Liston.)