reciting Ginsberg in the shower
by Ashly N. Flores
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! Everything is holy! Everybody’s holy! Everywhere is holy! Every day is in eternity!
O shame,
you unworthy idol,
before I undress, I turn the lights off.
To no longer observe myself as a breathing
thing.
In trying to avoid the sight of my body, the awning window
betrays me,
a trespass peek of my ridged hip scar and the outline
of my soft thighs.
Sitting before your eye, I learned
to categorize every piece into a perversion. To pick
at myself as the crows do, stretching the red and devouring it into naught.
Everyman’s an angel!
I want obsidian feathers to sway with the humming grasp of gravity. I want to pluck
away and intertwine each plume with fern. I want to make myself a wreath, crowning, at
last, this bestial mark. I want to stare into the mirror and have a ruby-eyed swan staring
back.