←        POIESIS 1.1        →

I knock and talk from the other side of a heavy wooden door
I go back to myself saw the key at the lock brass broken off
and the handle jammed too I go where I have to go
to the convenience store where the clerk has my name
tattooed on his neck finger-width letters just above the collar
I take my going slow it’s late September and I’ve got a little yolk
left in my bowl I stand wide-legged eyeing the kitchen yellow
glow from over the oven dark blots of fur on the floor I am good
at hiding I don’t even think to look for me no one does no one
feels me like a burr in their boot a lump along their dress hem
no one checks their jacket inseams the milks around their eyes
for me look in any room I am not in & find me & why not
press charges? Because I did not have the agency, the bravery,
the support because he did not drug me without my knowledge
because he was not over the age of twenty-one at the time of the offense
because he did not use a weapon can I be honest? In my twenties
in that dormitory on the eleventh floor all night I’d imagine
slipping out of bed onto the balcony with a fingernail clipper
snipping the nylon squares of the bird-netting opening a hole in the air
to climb out is the world still a beautiful place?
Does a benign spirit watch over me? No. I let it go tiger-eyed
at the edge of the room and I got used to you.