IMAGINE! HIS LEFT HAND CRADLING MY HEAD, HIS RIGHT ARM AROUND MY WAIST! I CHARGE YOU, SISTERS: DO NOT AWAKEN LOVE UNTIL IT SO DESIRES
I tithe 10% of my new underwear to my future
self, the one who has fallen in love.
I hide it under my mattress. I forget
to fall in love. I live until my hair is long and white.
When I die, I stick around for a while.
My future self, undulating like a moon,
discovers my stash. I watch her smooth the lace
over her hips, over her moon and stars. She fans
her fingers and presses them against her belly, brushes the tip
of her thumb against a pink bow.
But has she fallen in love? I ask. Have you?
I ask
standing behind her in the mirror.
LEANNE DRAPEAU is a teacher and writer from Connecticut, USA. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia.
Welcome to B O D Y's 2021 Spring Issue. Check back daily throughout the month of May for exciting and fresh new poems, stories, essays and interviews.
If they would stay just where they are all morning, /
they’d be the monument to the history they’re looking for.
In the late 90s/early 2000s I saw an abandoned narrow-gauge track in the woods along which the locals had ridden on beds with wheels. I wouldn’t have had the imagination to make such a thing up. And if I had made it up, I’d say it was rubbish. But I saw it: a bizarre slice of real life in the taiga. All I had to do was find the right words to describe it.
At the start of the war, two pilots and one poet were seeking Galina’s hand. Such were those times: pilots surpassed poets in both number and capability.
Rain falls on the wedding /
a hole in the church is suspected /
and the blessing jumps crazily /
from umbrella to umbrella
“You will crush our enemies or I will crush you,” the voice commanded. “These are my neighbors,” I said. “I don’t get along with most of them, but I wouldn’t want to crush them.” “It’s them or you,” the voice said.
Little Shorts, sharpen your keys and clutch them like knives. //
When you’ve got nothing else, go for the eyes.
New poetry by Matthew Olzmann, Vítězslav Nezval, Leanne Drapeau, Andrea Jurjević, Sheila Dong, Richard Jackson, Ondřej Buddeus, Jeff Fallis, Stephen Scott Whitaker. Fiction by Julia Kissina, Pavol Rankov, and E.J. Schwartz. Reviews and essays by Ailbhe Darcy, Burt Kimmelman, Chris Crawford, Stephan Delbos, Michael Stein, Rob A. Mackenzie. Art by Khari Johnson-Ricks.
He sang /
like a gas station on a black summer night.
At the heart of this otherwise light-hearted collection are a set of relationships with archetypal men – the lover, the father, the rapist – which are explored with great care and seriousness.
