On the Art of Conjugation When I ran out of animals, I burned my insides on the altar, offering. The gods I used to worship may have died, but my coaxing always rises, an arpeggio of palilalia, last diminished note of a chord in D minor. Someone has to keep the fires hot. I stoke the coals of girlhood, laying out the bits of me I only knew existed when they were not mine any longer. Here is the first time I discovered I was hollow, pinned like Medusa, my head naked, snakeless. In embers, the duvet cover smokes out its pomegranates, the blood and the vomit. That is what I shed unwillingly every month, full moon rolling out the tide from my thighs. There is the yolk sac of the child I never grew. My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to
My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to fucking the manager.
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