Laura Relyea
Ke$ha has rallied a small army—two thousand, two hundred and seventy women—each a soldier with her own set of offerings and talents. We recognize and celebrate this in one another. Ke$ha has marshaled us to cast change, to beat the blankets of dust and start some real fires.
It’s not a rowdy assembly, though we are powerful and teaming.
Ke$ha delivers her edicts with canopied whispers into each of our ears. She threads through us slowly. I suspect each of us have a tailored command. A trigger word, each of us, that prompts us to straighten our backs and survey the land around us.
Once Ke$ha fell victim to a home invasion. A strange man crept through her window while she was away. He took several necklaces and rings and a pocketful of dreams. Most of us would have trouble sleeping after that but not Ke$ha. She bought a baseball bat and slept sound. Ke$ha approaches me through the crowd.
She cups my left ear in her tiny hand and whispers our word.
Laura Relyea is a writer in Atlanta, GA and the Editor of Vouched Books. She has reviewed books for PASTE, Creative Loafing, Fanzine, PURGE Atlanta, and elsewhere. She is also the Whipcracker and Momentum Chief of The Inman Park Squirrel Census, a venture that was named one of Kickstarter’s Best of 2012. Her fiction and poetry have been published by NAP, Coconut Poetry, BULL’s Choice Cuts, and Necessary Fiction. She both fears and respects glitter.
