Reprieve Lyrics - Reprieve - Ani Difranco

Manhattan is an island 

Like the women who are 

Surrounded by children in a car 

Surrounded by cars 

Or Manhattan was a project 

That projected the worst of mankind 

First, one and then the other 

Has made its mark on my mind 

It's sixty years later 

Near the hypo-center of the A-bomb 

I'm in the middle of Hiroshima 

Watching a twisted old Eucalyptus tree wave 

One of the very few lives 

That survived and lives on 

Remembering the day it was suddenly 

Thousands of degrees in the shade 

And what all of nature gave birth to 

Terror took in a blinding ray 

With the kind of pain 

It would take cancer so many years just to say 

Oh, to grow up gagged and blindfolded 

A man's world in your little girl's head 

The voice of the great Mother drowned out 

In the constant honking 

Haunting the car crash up ahead 

Oh, to grow up hypnotized 

And then try to shake yourself awake 

'cause you can sense what has been lost 

'cause you can sense what is at stake 

Yeah, so it took me a few years to catch on 

That those days I catch everyone's eye 

Correspond with those nights of the month 

When the moon gleams like an egg in the sky 

And men are using a sense 

They don't even know they have 

Just to watch me walk by 

And me, I'm supposed to be sensible 

Leave my animal outside to cry 

But when all of nature conspires 

To make me her glorious whore 

It's 'cause in my body, I hold the secret recipe 

Of precisely what life is for 

And the patriarchy that looks to shame me for it 

Is the same one making war 

And I've said too much already 

But I'll tell you something more 

To split yourself in two 

Is just the most radical thing you can do 

So girl, if that shit ain't up to you 

Then you simply are not free 

'cause from the sunlight on my hair 

To which eggs I grow to term 

To the expression that I wear 

All I really own is me 

Yes, to split yourself in two 

Is just the most radical thing you can do 

Goddess forbid, that little atom 

Should grow so jealous of Eve 

And in the face of the great farce 

Of the nuclear age 

Feminism ain't about equality 

It's about reprieve