write this
emmer effer
a pretend genius broadsuction
some days are better than none
Moonlight Slinks Through My Window
Motion the way to escape, and I will soar—I could live. Silent.
Stumbling in shadow.
Plump bruises thrilling the skin.
Glorious agony. Or, I could unstitch my lips.
Re-grow a tongue.
Purge that sleepy, delirious
night terror—
insomnia for visionaries.Rid myself of the residual aggression.
Throw a storming tea party confession.
The dolls are sagging in their rags,
but they don’t belong on shelves.
Like Nora I feel it,a songbird pushing through.Something wonderful is about to happen!
I’ll pour my breast milk into a
sippy cup and
give it to the dog.
I’ll take my loves—imagined armfuls of the almost real—
and put them where they’ll be safe.
Will the journey be beautiful, Frida?Will I ever return?I’ll wilt in a stream of flowers with
Ophelia.
I’ll open my mouth—and wait.
***
Jennifer Suzanne Givhan is a Mexican-American poet who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. Givhan earned her M.A. in English Literature at California State University Fullerton, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Verdad, Dash, Caesura, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, Third Wednesday, Cutthroat, Pinyon, Earth's Daughters, Rockhurst Review, Palabra, Prick of the Spindle, and Mothering Magazine, and she was a 2010 recipient of the Emerging Voices Fellowship through PEN Center USA.
