A Mélange of Poems Appearing in the Gender Issue:
At the diner on Main Street
That girl is a gymnast, he said.
And I asked: How do you know?—
He said he could tell
from the shape
of her body, the size
of her muscles, the way
she moved. I supposed, as I drank
my milk at the diner window,
that like knows like
and athlete to athlete, he saw
in her a kinship that he would
never find in me. I looked up
past the old, dingy windows
on Main Street. The skinny girl,
walking quickly, was gone.
And I felt every pound
of pregnancy on my body
like a deadening barbell
and I wondered if he would
reach for my hand.
—Lori D’Angelo
Anniversary
joy, rag-eyed, soft
as a morning egg,
and still the bottom
falls out of your heart
your thin feet
strange and muscular
turning towards one another
at strong angles
are they yours?
an old woman’s feet
her hands prostrate
over your words
and then again that viperous
joy, that molasses
shout, coming forth
face-up, glowingly
unalarmed
so you grow old
so the new string hums
the same note as the old
all’s well, all’s well
but then, everything’s changed
—Hannah Craig
Untitled (The first time …) from One Hundred Hungers
The first time her thick blood dampened the new moss of her body,
she opened a cloistered inner door to her mother.
Together they watched the alphabet of liquid spill out of her earth,
each cramped syllable spreading into an idiom, a dark and long language.
Her mother taught her to push the storm back
into the throne of her swelling, and later, in the dark,
she tasted the spoil of red on the tip of her finger.
Please stop, she said to the ceremonial force of this cyclamen twirling up
and inverting her center, but each month her insides descended in diamonds
and dashes. A salt-cycle of ornamented sheets and brief regeneration.
three seeds
I waited for the rain her hair river
crows on my body I drink a cloud of hair
handmade in the bed an ocean
out of wedlock our bodies do not break
your neck slit gold from each other
and open
but I once knew who
fear a world where we love in the limb
was called my reflection down-
minted stream. Handmade, story
I bring out a tree
will cleanse your breath,
again, having
washed myself too many
play the veena if you river again
made of eucalyptus trees. Think
the dirt may find a home
of the sky, his pronoun
no longer appeared, in flames
and the fish may rest
in graves my body
only a wall of cicadas,
with body to break
what if a lola sky no water can dose
Italicized words from Melissa Sipin, Claire Donato, Hari Malagayo Alluri, Rachelle Cruz, Todd Wellman, Tamiko Beyer, Paul Ocampo, Serena W. Lin & Bushra Rehman.
Book of Nights
I
Open your book of nights,
unreadable and faded.
The sheets are damp,
your sleep bloated with rain
and the same dream, the one where
you are standing at the window
broken,
picking glass stars
from your wet mouth.
You’ve kept nothing of his
but the unbelieving children
and a faint memory
of shifting bones
But some nights,
the moon’s hard eye holds you
closer, tighter
than your body can bear.
II
He’s been warned
of her sharp white teeth,
the necklace of vertebrae kept
hidden among the underthings.
Her openmouthed kisses leave him raw,
his throat lined with salt.
She is too hungry to be trusted.
Tonight, while she sleeps,
he will fill his heart with stones,
drown it deep.
III
Sleep is not the forgetting it used to be.
You put the kettle on, wash your face,
watch fireflies crawl on the ceiling
till day breaks.
Love has locked you in this body,
fashioned your wings into tired hands
that fall open, suppliant,
on his chest
like dead spiders.
IV
Mine is a magician’s smile
styled with mirrors and smoke,
red wax scrawl, trick of the eye.
At night, when my skin is bare,
I am little more than a question.
I lay still, wait for the one who
will happen upon my true face.
When touched too gently, I say things
only trees understand.
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