Which is to say that like a good theoretical objectified body, my identity was created not by me but by the various desires and beliefs of those around me. – Daniel Borzutzky My body is a small cave door it’s a slick whale a jubilant sea of tall grass that sways & makes its way across countries & lovers I love love-making I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in touch I have these breasts & some would want to come on hands & knees to worship them call me flower or desert Maybe I was only supposed to be stone or a baby eel long & layered a nun? I don’t remember ever saying yes just no I am searching for my own body not the one I was told is so I want to be always open like a canyon Maybe I was only supposed to be tree or temple In some circles I am just an open gate a sinful bauble Once someone said you are this & I never questioned it I am searching my own body for God or someone like her—
Copyright © 2018 by Yesenia Montilla. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 12, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
To understand what it would be like
to remove my clothes
as painters do in portraits of themselves
I imagine I’m the woman
who knows her body
no longer belongs to the young artist
who painted herself before she had children,
before her topography was changed
by forces erosive as water and wind,
and yet she goes on painting it,
the girdle of her earth that is now an etched terrain
crossed with silver rivulets.
And hills, I want to say to her.
Valleys. Then hummocks,
hot springs, hoodoo. What is art about
if not depression? Uplift? Depression
again? At which she straightens
the flesh of her shoulders and neck
to face me before I disappear
into landscape,
my favorite state of undress.
Copyright © 2018 Allison Funk. This poem originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Summer 2018. Used with permission of the author.
Hell,
we just climbed. Reached the lip
and fell back, slipped
and started up again––
climbed to be climbing, sang
to be singing. It's just what we do.
No one bothered to analyze our blues
until everybody involved
was strung out or dead; to solve
everything that was happening
while it was happening
would have taken some serious opium.
Seriously: All wisdom
is afterthought, a sort of helpless relief.
So don't go thinking none of this grief
belongs to you: Even if
you don't know how it
feels to fall, you can get my drift;
and I, who live it
daily, have heard
that perfect word
enough to know just when
to use it––as in:
Oh hell. Hell, no.
No ––
this is hell.
Copyright © 2013 by Rita Dove. Originally published in Poet Lore. Used with the permission of the poet.
1
I tore from a limb fruit that had lost its green.
My hands were warmed by the heat of an apple
Fire red and humming.
I bit sweet power to the core.
How can I say what it was like?
The taste! The taste undid my eyes
And led me far from the gardens planted for a child
To wildernesses deeper than any master’s call.
2
Now these cool hands guide what they once caressed;
Lips forget what they have kissed.
My eyes now pool their light
Better the summit to see.
3
I would do it all over again:
Be the harbor and set the sail,
Loose the breeze and harness the gale,
Cherish the harvest of what I have been.
Better the summit to scale.
Better the summit to be.
From Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002) by Toni Morrison with silhouettes by Kara Walker. Used with permission from The Believer magazine.
I am but a small-winged bird: But I will conquer the big world As the bee-martin beats the crow, By attacking it always from Above.
This poem is in the public domain.
This is like a life. This is lifelike.
I climb inside a mistake
and remake myself in the shape
of a better mistake—
a nice pair of glasses
without any lenses,
shoes that don’t quite fit,
a chest that always hurts.
There is a checklist of things
you need to do to be a person.
I don’t want to be a person
but there isn’t a choice,
so I work my way down and
kiss the feet.
I work my way up and lick
the knee.
I give you my skull
to do with whatever you please.
You grow flowers from my head
and trim them too short.
I paint my nails nice and pretty
and who cares. Who gives a shit.
I’m trying not to give a shit
but it doesn’t fit well on me.
I wear my clothes. I wear my body.
I walk out in the grass and turn red
at the sight of everything.
Copyright © 2015 by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. Used with the permission of the author.