Your True Season

By Monica McClure

Because urbanites can’t look at mountains
we dress ourselves like birds of paradise
in falsies and teeter
on Alexander McQueen flamingos
clutching gold knuckles to our breasts
Bodice make me bold tonight and if I die
before I wake let this embryo inside me never take
hold of my uterine lining for my
24-inch waistline’s sake
When I was a girl I would rip the yellow
OBGYN listings out of the phone book
and watch them sail on a river so refractive
I’d swear it wore French skincare products
The song of doves was prelapsarian
They answered each other always like
poor Echo in her cave
wailing “There is only subjective truth!”
which was a statement never heard before
repeated so many times it lost all its power
No body just the history of her libidinal choices
I had not thought to compare the ego
 to a video game because I was so deep in it
I was all drives and instincts
This is why one should never try to explain
art with personal experience
Still I plan to take full control of the situation
by annihilating meaning
I lost my virginity on a fence post
I lost it to my middle finger
And I was like a balloon full of saline
when I straddled a balance beam
This is how I lost it
like a circus girl somersaulting
for the thrill of her inner spectator

This Poem Features In: