Alexis Pope

Middle English

I have a body to show you because I was born.

Try to remember the winter. Try to knock down the door with your thoughts. It’s hard, the way my mouth moves forward on you. I have a tongue to wet. A throat to wait.

When the siren moves down the road outside, I am here. The arms I wear at night are a different set. There was no one on the fire escape last time. Tonight, I will a neighbor or a goat. A word I use too frequently. Like every word, because that is all.

Sound changes. The drum is a bit slower, breathy. If I wanted to make your heartbreak, I’d meet you outside. The stairs rise behind me as I push you down, down. You spread it all over me. I want it more over. Move uh-huh. I march to the side, disorder to the bottom. Cloves through my nostrils. A headache. The urchin, my nipple, my waste.

Alexis Pope is the author of the chapbooks NO GOOD (H_NGM_N, forthcoming 2013) and Girl Erases Girl (dancing girl press, 2013). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Coconut, Washington Square, and Columbia Poetry Review, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.