Feeling Good
Soon after the leather jacket, I buy an ace bandage
at Rite Aid. It is such an innocuous thing,
stretchy beige cloth in a smiling red box,
so easy – put it next to toothpaste and I seem like
a blank slate, pass for unconcerned with my heart
rattling in my chest.
It is already a year later and I am finally beginning to let go
of the girl, to let all the childhood portraits just flutter away
in the wind, let them fall back into the ocean where they belong,
but every time I strip the flesh, all I find is bone
where I was promised woman and I don’t know how to
fill this void in my skin, so
at home, I try on man like a new dress
parade around in front of the mirror, twirling to see
how man flows, how he rises and falls in the wind.
I drop my voice, call myself Max (teenage fantasy of boy)
but my tongue keeps catching on the word ‘I.’
‘He’, ‘She,’ and ‘They’ are fine, but ‘I’
‘I’ catches in my throat like so many dead leaves,
rakes at my esophagus, a shard of glass
once something beautiful, now just so much shocked silence.
As a child, I often played inarticulately with make-up,
I never quite understood how the whole thing
worked, so I applied eye shadow, not to my eyelid, to
my cheeks, or my nose, or to my whole face,
turning my whole self blue, or green, or even purple
on wild days. I put on a mask then not because it was
true – what, after all does a five year old know
about truth – rather because it felt good to have a body malleable
as clay, soft gobs of flesh without the bone.
Because it felt good.
Until the Blindfold
take off your clothes, he commands
and you do, you peel your shirt over your head
it drops to the floor like a deflated
balloon billowing
warping as it flutters down
he taps the top button of your jeans
a gentle gesture but demanding
expectant and you obey, your fingers
dropping to the button tugging it free
to slide the fabric slowly from your hips
you stand before him
a grotesque thing
pure object, the image of yourself and
he makes a show of you
clothed, you are woman
there is shelter in that word
it is the roof over your head
but when you stand in front of him
naked
and he names you
you are a homeless shivering thing
a wordless being, skin, red raw
covered in ash, goosebumps and cold sweat
without ‘woman’ to hide inside, you become
(almost) the girl, the impossible image
of yourself again and you watch her
move towards him
you watch her fold into his lap
you watch her and are not her
you move and stay frozen
watch and act
and you are ashamed
he sees it
i see it
we all see it
you are ashamed
your head ripped back by the hair
the girl filling you up
helpless, innocent, despicable thing
rising from the ashes in your gut until
you are tenuous surface tension threatening
to spill over, to make a grand mess of this
you are ashamed
until the blindfold, until the ballgag
then you are
then you act
then act, then act
when he is finally finished with you
and you collapse into him, soft,
and he holds you
you are the girl, wordless
a broken thing, yes, but an honest one
there are no words for it
just body
no foreign name inked on your skin
no woman, just body
his hands quiet on you, accepting
every breath
to rise and fall
in your chest
Carol Brown is a performance poet, student and general bookworm based in Brooklyn. She is currently studying poetry and psychology at Eugene Lang College. Carol has been featured at the 2014 and 2015 New York City Poetry Festivals, the LaMama Experimental Theater, the 2014 TedYouth Conference, the Jersey City Slam and on Indiefeed. Her work can be found in Germ Magazine, 11 and 1/2, 12th Street and great weather for MEDIA.
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