Our Body in Segments, Lauren Foley

32 OUR BODY IN SEGMENTS Lauren Foley

snake woman—spitting all her teeth out like diamonds, princess-cut and so venom-edged they could split a man open at the seams, stitch his skin back together with feathers. I beg her:

tell me how you got to be this way.

standing on the riverside, back to god, and herself, and straw shoved deep into mud, sucking the earth until it shudders and collapses, upheaval just the sand beneath her crescent moon nails. mama said: morals don’t make a man, but they practically raise a woman, and I

can’t stop staring at her. at her countertops cluttered with orange pill bottles and molted owl wings, at the cross bisecting her bare throat urging me or someone else to slam back the rewards of (mis)behaving, at her melon-slick mouth murmuring all the promises she’s made to man and kept to Earth. maybe I’m just another one of her

promises, another bare-skinned apology to the world that made her but fumbled and made the rest of us too. we never learned to keep balance, never learned the feel of the root binding our ankles to Earth, never learned worship with kerosene and eggyolk sliding down the back of our throats. I beg her:

tell me how you got to be this way; save me or teach me or feed me to the ground. the devil is in her eyes but god is in her hands, and when they lay me to rest, I’ll feel the shudder. her teeth, loose—the prick of them at my stomach, the jag from biting off a bottle cap. mama said: morals don’t make a man. if only she learned that they never even come near a woman.