What Will Happen to the Men
by Sarah Bokich

 
I was taught by those men that nothing
about me, from the pitch of my voice
to the shape of my flesh, to the density
of my rage, should ever displease.

I sanded myself like a pine box.
I was as shiny as a shoe.
And now I’ve decided my body
will inconvenience those men.

My hips will grow wide and block
any doorway they want to enter.
I will be a traffic jam, a thunderstorm
and the sparking power lines it fells.

Those men will step
in dog shit because of me.
I will make it
unavoidable.

The cleft between my legs will open,
fecund and sweet. They will skid
in my viscosity and fall like trees
grown too heavy for the hillside.

There will be no beauty in me,
just momentum and noise.
I will move too fast for those men
to keep their eyes on me,

but I will talk so loud and long that
their ears will grow red with listening,
and they will feel the weight
of my body each time I overtake them.

Once, under the eyes of those men,
I pressed the butt of my hand against
my unborn daughter’s twisting body
to suppress the flagrancy of her life.

Little daughter, let us be unbearable.
Stretch your perfect mouth to grunt
and crow. Let light shine out of your palms.
Twist like a typhoon about to make landfall.

*********

 

Sarah Bokich is a writer and marketing consultant. She received her BA from the University of Portland, and her MBA from Portland State University. Her work has appeared in Voicecatcher, Cloudbank, Poetry Breakfast,and The Timberline Review, and her chapbook Rocking Chair at the End of the World is forthcoming this spring with Finishing Line Press. Sarah lives with her husband and daughter in Portland, Oregon. She can be reached at http://www.sarahbokich.com.

 

Cover Photo: courtesy pixelbay