SPINNERET GIRL WEIGHS THE BENEFITS OF DROPPING OUT
No more Socratic workshops
dissecting why I wept over
photographs of trepanned &
lobotomized asylum patients—
The needles pyloned through
their brains. The rheumy
membrane glazing their eyes.
No more psychoanalyzing what
possessed me to underscore
Foucault's proverb—the soul
is the prison of the body—
three times, or waiting to know
my soul is dendrite, synapse,
tendon. No pineal gland voyeurs
or wannabe philosophers to claim
my use of the word proverb is
intellectually dishonest &
devoid of context, & no more
frat house scientists
pinching my web glands
to test if they're real.
No more wishing for another
femme to calligraphy
Sapphic odes round the rim
of my hips, or lacking
words to even ask for such
a thing. A lifetime of
prayer teaches a girl nothing
but how to spike her blood
bitter with waiting. Body,
I swear, I want to stop dragging
us—sleeveless & opiate-spun—
into frostburned dusks. Stop
passing out under canalside
benches. But body, look,
when we wake aching beneath
the dew-tipped reeds, don't
they glisten like godheads? Don't
you see? I can't feel you exist
unless we thirst like this. O
body, forgive us our hungers
no more.
TYPO
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