LexPoMo – June 30, 2021
Twenty-twenty-one
to a close has come. See you,
twenty-twenty-two!
She points at the clover growing from the stoop’s cracked step
She points at me.
The lightning bugs are out.
I catch one with little effort.
Such easy prey, broadcasting their location as they float lazily across the sky.
This one is lucky.
I open my hand, watch him traverse my palm, spread his wings, and move on.
I cannot help but think of so many who had a harsher fate.
Those grabbed up by my young hands,
Forced into a jelly jar Granny pulled from under the house,
And then trapped by the lid she poked through with the old can opener.
They would spend their last hours as my night light,
Perched on the coffee table while I slept beneath in a sleeping bag.
Every morning after would find them lifeless in my jar, regardless of the air holes.
I would learn later that I had stolen their chance at a legacy,
And would never trap another one.
In January, the epiphany star said “Find”
And I didn’t know where to seek.
I searched in shadows and blinding lights.
Listened through loud places,
And still did not know.
Blank pages and screens,
Empty bottled messages and cups of tea leaves,
Silent poets and prophets,
None could point the way.
Giving up, giving in, my eyes closed to the darkness
And I could finally see.
All I needed to find
Was me.
(thanks for another fantastic LexPoMo and to everyone who read my winged words. I’m glad you were also part of my “find”)
I tell you “This is not a phase.”
When I hear “Girl” called,
It is not me,
For I am only her to you,
To them,
To everybody else.
You see feminine features
Paired with my genderless mind
And think “What a waste”,
But… It’s only a waste
If I don’t take what I have
And build myself from the pieces.
Forward: The form is borrowed from a Sonnet Crown I failed to finish (yet?) because sonnets became tedious and unenjoyable. Each line is the chronological end line to every other 2021 LexPoMo poem.
pre-dawn, pre-op arrival
nil per os since midnight
street clothes-deprived
prep commences
two ectomies
bilaterial salpingo oopherectomy
& total hysterectomy
performance to come
by artist daVinci
mechanical manipulator
tiniest of instruments and camera
guided by gynecological oncologist
urine cup thrust into my hand
we need a sample
not sure I have anything left to give
what do you need it for?
pregnancy test
what?
need to make sure you aren’t pregnant
you have got to be kidding
doctor won’t proceed without it
would have to be an immaculate conception
curtain-walled first surgeries
break gray-shadowed silence
titters crescendoing to guffaws
laugh-gathered
we breathe
(…………………….Line drawn at humorectomies)
i feel so guilty taking that wasps life
it was gonna sting me but it just wanted to get outside
could have died out there but it died inside with me
i tried to open the door it wouldn’t let itself be free
i could have been an entomologist if i went to university
well my foot is broken hot girl summer am i right
but i’ll still go to work
and for the first few hours i’ll try to act like it doesn’t hurt
i don’t know if i have much in me anymore
but i have stockholm syndrome for this fucking store
going on a bend there’s a lot of sagittarius within my friends
things should be looking up and i guess they kinda are
my sister got her first job and now she can drive a car
i smell like sunscreen i’m sunburnt still and i think i’m the happiest i’ve ever been
broken foot and pink skin
