Grace McGovern
Flexion
The body lives in glass, or imagines it is made of glass
Glass lives in the elbows, the neck, the ankles
Once, a man pulled over to tell me I was an auspicious sign. “Your hair.” He pointed out the window with wide fingers. “Your hair,” again, as explanation
Of bird calls, I know three: mourning dove, cardinal, sparrow
I am new to such witnessing
This not turning away, this labored breath
Is it too late?
I practice observation poorly and with hunger
The body resists
Consider the rusted ladder of spine
Even a bird has one, the rigid inner self
Through each door, another door
Blood is obvious, pulses in the hands
Things are working against me
Head husk-like and scrapped of pulp
In the locked box of home, the body is another box
I am writing a story where the body possesses the self
How to figure out the voices, make them distinct
We used to walk with books on our heads
I wore a leotard and lived in a mirror
The body exacts revenge
Try not to be resentful
Every house is still that house, even with my good sheets
Hurt to be moved through, looked at. Scraped, sampled. Scoffed at, thrown in a closet. Talked to gently, or not at all
My wife and I wrote it down for the doctor, but the words shift
The pain is unnamable, which is to say unknowable
The body falls to the floor like clothes in a heap, or like nothing at all
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Image by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels
Grace McGovern is an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in Saint Louis. Grace's work has appeared in Dunes Review, Milk Press, Funicular Magazine, and others. She spends much of her time with her wife and their dog and cat.
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