just because She devoured the twin in the womb
didn’t mean She must everything complicate/unless for sym-
metry/unless for the sake of music’s sake
didn’t Book of She
almost sound like banshee?
an entire pot of straight-up chicory coffee a handful of almonds
to settle the inner ships afloat in their systems
what was it She wanted
to master—suspense, titillation—to make sin an ax
to blend the eye?
some breathing space between the untender unintended enjambment
& instead? a yellow yard the bayou floods ;hair going grey too
slow a silver string of it here & there among the other hair
She thinks of the word premature & a series of examples flotsams
through Her mind ,,ejaculation being first baby
being last
LGBTQIA+ writer, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet Laureate, Flower Conroy’s first full-length manuscript, “Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder,” was chosen by Chen Chen as the winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition; her second collection, “A Sentimental Hairpin,” is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. Her poetry will or has appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review and others.
Angel Rust 