us girls amidst girls wield the weaving material scattered kaleidoscopic. This
recognition beyond sight, the apparatus of vision pressed up
against glass. Gender discontinuum, flesh of collected invention
obliged to my own social contract.
Tooth against tooth, braced into breaking. This one dream I do
not write down, its viscera remains. It arrives again no less
familiar; toolless defanging, making room in the mouth for
gumming. Twin mirror averse syncing into study spins of
Juturna. The bloodied canines in my palm do not
render me powerless: now there’s a new way to whistle.
Copyright © 2023 by S*an D. Henry-Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 12, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.