Welcome to National Poetry Month, 2015! We’re celebrating all month long. Each day we will bring you a poem we love–a selection from one of our published or forthcoming collections. In turn, the featured poets will introduce poems they love. Happy April!
Today’s featured poet is Kristy Bowen, author of girl show.
disassembling maria
Saturday, he pulls a rabbit from the space
behind my head. Sunday, quarters
from my ears. It gets dicey sometimes,
what’s mine, what’s his. In the half-light,
half lit, he talks about Romania, shows me
hand-tinted photos of his wife dressed like
a swan. She balances on one leg in front
of a grease-painted castle and dies tragically.
We all die tragically. Still, he forbids me
to wear white. Forbids me to bathe alone.
Nightly, as if on cue, my mouth surrenders
peppermints and a length of chicken wire.
The audience stares like a crime scene
but the space inside the box is quiet,
dark and sweet with heat. He’ll determine
which side is the heart and raise the sword
above his head. My body will go on giving
things up: pink scarves and the ace of spades.
There’s a small feathered animal nesting
in the cove beneath my lungs. I hiccup.
Hide her beneath the table when he starts to speak.
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Kristy has chosen to introduce: “Cri de Coeur” by Liz Robbins.
She says: I recently stumbled upon this sample poem from a past issue of the awesome magazine Parcel that knocked my socks off from an author I was completely unfamiliar with.
______________________________
A visual artist and writer, Kristy Bowen is the author of several book, chapbook, and zine projects, including the recent girl show (Black Lawrence Press, 2014) and the forthcoming major characters in minor films (Sundress Publications, 2015) . She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio.
