Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Emilia Phillips
A KIND OF SECOND VIRGINITY
Certain desires? I ate them
the way the viable twin opens a little mouth
in its thigh, just below the hip, to swallow
its cell-shadow. One day, a restless itch.
Like a flea bite or tickle of a stray hair.
It’s not unlike a tree healing
around shrapnel. Another stitch
has wriggled out of my cheek, four years after
the surgery that made me
look like me again. In my cursive,
lovely and lonely look exactly
the same. I have only just noticed.
At the bar before the elevator
before the room with clean
sheets, should I write you a note that reads,
you look so lovely
you might read it as you look so lonely
but I am here—finally—
with you—finally—in a man’s suit
made for a woman’s body. Last night, he painted my toes
so red they look black.
But this morning? I look down and startle to see
someone else standing
where I’m standing still.
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO YOU ARE OR WHAT YOU DO, SOMETHING IN THE WORLD WILL MAKE A FOOL OF YOU
Mr. Bolton, the girls’ health teacher, gave us some advice about what to do
when we got into an inevitable argument with our future
husbands. Lift up your shirts, girls,
and flash him your boobs. Apparently, that was the tactic
of Mrs. Bolton,
my geometry teacher, who, earlier that year, had interrupted a lesson on triangles
to turn on the news. We watched the planes crash
again and again on a loop, and I couldn’t help
but want to calculate the surface area of all that steel and glass
before it crumbled. Fall was sex and spring was physical
education, and some of the girls told Bolton
they were on their periods
every day, every single one, so they wouldn’t have to
do laps around the track. But I did them always, often
alone, while the others watched from the bleachers,
braiding each other’s hair or doing homework. I didn’t want
him to know when it was or wasn’t. I didn’t want him to know anything
about my body, but he measured our waists
and weighed us and mock-whispered a secret—
Bench presses will make your breasts more firm.
He made us read Song of Solomon to learn
about intercourse, and stuck yellow happy faces to our chests
when we played an extra rough game of dodge
ball. He loved his whistle, and stroked it like a pet hermit crab. I refused to undress
in the locker room in front
of the other girls, even though someone called me
a prude, and I averted my eyes whenever a girl lifted her
t-shirt above her head or slipped her Umbros. I was afraid
of what I might find there,
especially desire. And so I shimmied into my skirt
and buttoned my oxford as slowly as I possibly could,
listening to the others
laugh in their single voice
from inside the locked stall I chose.
AT A PARTY A WOMAN INTRODUCED HERSELF TO ME AS DAWN
and when she asked my name I gave her dawn too. I don’t know why, except I’m often
nervous as light at the bottom of a swimming pool—the deep end
where I once dived for a diamond
that turned out to be just a piece of broken bottle, a hard
lemonade. I wanted to be Dawn because I have never felt so full
of light before. Or birds singing. I often catch myself holding
my breath while doing the most ordinary things like quartering
a lemon or tying a red scarf around my throat as if I must
costume my fear of strangulation, by which I mean my fear of a man’s hands exercising
their strength. A thumb makes a perfect
bruise, don’t you think? I wonder, is patience a concept
available to immortals, or is it their tariff? I miss the world
personified—the anemoi in their four positions, wringing out their lungs
like oranges, which I must eat in abundance in the winter to save my brain from nibbling
the black hook. Once I had a job to which I drove an hour
into the sun. And, then, into the sun home. Since then I’ve had one rule:
head west in the morning, east in the evening. Before dawn
this morning, voices awakened me—a woman’s accusations, a man’s defense.
YoufuckedhernoIdidn’tbaby.
Before Dawn, I had another name. The body, being made
of flesh, absorbs sound, which is why my heart will give up one day. But here it is: still
beating
itself to death. For the reason all violence is committed, I guess—
To feel alive. Or just to feel.
***
Photograph of Emilia Phillips by Tracy Tanner.