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Destruction As The Cause / Of Coming Into Being

By Mallory Imler Powell
Poetry•Vol. XXXI No. 2 (Summer 2018)

I live in a pit of vomit / always asking for a pen
to bear myself / I can’t remember
I trauma trauma loop / oh the bore
Despite incessant years / emptied of spoken words
I still have visions / of him my father
Always the gun again / Always in my bedroom
My mother assures me / I’ll lose my uterus soon
I’m always about to start my period / Or on my period
Or relieved my period is over / Or the few days of the month
when I’m thinking I’m so glad / to not be thinking of my period
I’m defined by my blood / my deferment of motherhood
Why did I deny / my body’s pleasure
I’ve never wanted / to punish my father
[ Does your father / understand your suffering ]

 

[ Is your mother desperate / for you to love the father ]
The motherfucking father / I was made to leave the courtroom
while they considered / the last time my parents fucked
She said I needed to see / if I still felt anything
But how we know is / not permissible in the court of male law
Her uterus had fallen out / They held it all against her
Under biblical oath / he said he never touched me
Always normal / father daughter
The cops let him leave / with the gun in his white hand
My mother still believes / in a religion and nation
with no female authors / Where the father and
his women and his courts / condemn me for loving a woman
My mother’s always pleading / for me to join them
Can’t you just try / to love men again

Mallory Imler Powell
Mallory Imler Powell writes, edits, and works in public health. Recipient of the 2017 Fugue Poetry Prize and a Fulbright award, currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at New York University, serves as an international editor for Washington Square Review and tutors in the Prison Education Program. Poems in the Aesthetica International Creative Writing Anthology, Contemporary Verse 2, The Offing, PRISM international, SAND, subTerrain, The University of Canberra's International Poetry Prize Anthology, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere.

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