Megan Fox‘s poetry collection Pretty Boys Are Poisonous isn’t a simple recounting of relationships that went wrong. When announcing the 176-page book out today, the actress explained: “These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence.” Within those pages, Fox penned poems about her experience of having a miscarriage and enduring physical abuse in a toxic relationship.
In a poem titled “Oxycodone and Tequila,” Fox writes: “Today my sin was that I followed your friend to the dinner table / instead of waiting for you to lead me.” She goes on to detail a more specific instance, adding: “‘Oh you’re so pretty, everybody loves you, your life is so fucking easy,’ you say as you slip your fingers in my mouth and try to rip my face in two / … you hit me again and again.” The final line in the poem reads: “You fall asleep on top of me so that I can’t call my family or the police.”
Throughout other poems, like “Greek Tragedies Lose Their Poetry When You Live Them” and “A 32-Year-Old Narcissist Quantifies His Crimes,” Fox paints the image of bruises and empty apologies. Sarcasm breaks through in “Don’t Worry Darling,” where she writes: “Mornings after you would hurt me / I would wake up and make your coffee / Put on a sweatshirt so you wouldn’t have to look at the bruises you left … If anything I’m lucky, imagine all the girls who don’t get hurt, for laughing at another boy’s jokes, how ineffectual and undesirable they must feel.”
Two poems in Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, titled “i” and “ii,” seemingly detail a miscarriage. “I want to hold your hand / hear your laugh … but now / I have to say / goodbye,” she writes in one, detailing a vision of her baby “as they rip you from my insides.” She carefully balances details that would give too much away about identity or timelines in her poetry but recalls being “10 weeks and 1 day” along in her pregnancy and questions what she, or her partner, could have done to save it.
Fox is currently engaged to Machine Gun Kelly and shares three children with her ex-husband, Brian Austin Green.
Fox opens the book with a letter to her readers, writing about becoming reluctant to use her voice to express her emotions “because when I do it has made the men who have loved me feel intimidated, inadequate, and insecure.”
She adds: “From me poured these poems featuring previously unspoken feelings of… isolation, torment, self-harm, desperation, longing, restlessness, rage, and general anguish. These are the experiences of many of us that i not give voice to in these poems. This book is for anyone who has given much more than they received, or for anyone who struggles to believe they deserve to be heard. This book is also for me. Because fuck. I deserve better.”
