PARABLE
The first time I saw a bone break
it was an arm. The girl kicked and screamed
to escape her body, twisting on the floor.
It was too much to have a body.
Later, when I broke my own, it was different:
I didn’t try to get away. I stayed in the body
against the swelling that sought to force me out,
picked up my fractured elbow, knee bone,
and carried my body home. Listen, all you
I love, don’t think there’s anywhere else to go.
You must stay in the body too.
Promise me this, and I’ll stay with you
down here with the prick of grass on our legs,
the sun’s heat coming back up through the earth.
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KATIE HERMAN grew up in New Orleans, spent nine years in New York, and now lives in Washington, DC. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for Sakura Review, and her poetry has appeared in the Mississippi Review. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches writing and literature.
The man keeps telling me I’m beautiful. /
I still look young. //
He says it like I’ve asked for it, /
but I don’t care. //
For him or beauty.
Vagina neck. Twat gullet. /
Neck with brain wrinkles /
that yank me...
One had a ketchup bottle, the other a bottle of mustard, and they were holding them, crotch-level, squirting long streaks of ketchup and mustard on the floor, while we clapped in unison.
Who begat the earth? I did.
I grew it three times in my belly.
That isn’t true. It is.
Here is the image of a wife
in a thatched smokehouse––
she sleepwalks from fire
to fire, setting start again.
Afraid / to ask, I wonder if Joko was tested. / I don’t want to put him on the spot / and I know I’d think less of him / if he gave the wrong answer.
slut, thug, doper, bitch, her voice never rising above a whisper. These words may make you uncomfortable.
The woman carrying her life, /
who passed by a moment ago, calls out /
from the next street and someone answers, /
but not to her.
She’s never invited me to one of her parties. / Well, she invited me once. // Once I got there, she never talked to me. /
Never offered me a glass of wine. // Her brain must be a crowded / little place telling her, You’re terrific!
They had more interesting curses than ‘fuck’. /
They loved the views that they made for the future, /
for the people who were lucky enough /
to be born after them.
