Two Poems

Papilio Polyxenes
 

she will diagnose you by the national geographic
on the white stand by the plant too plastic to die
she will open to the two page spread; full color
ten thousand dissected black swallowtail butterflies
ask why you wanted to pin yourself to the windshield
of the oncoming forest hills train
why you only identify with animals that are already crucified
why you shave your arm’s wallpaper
she asks what color you will paint your new body
suggests yellow like egg yolk; like bruise almost healed
asks if you think it will feel less like him

Botanical Dentist
 

the flowers are teething this morning
pointed green buds knitted into rows
my backyard looks like an animal with its mouth open

Reed Hexamer is a multimedia artist and performance poet who runs workshops, open mics and poetry slams in the Boston area. She is also the president of the Massart Poetry Alliance and enjoys writing on fire escapes she perhaps should not be on.

Two Poems

Misandry Poem #1
 

I am immense
& I am out of control
of my body & I resist
all attempts at containment
(and abatement) by well-
meaning civil engineers.

With a slight effort I could 
break down your door
and sometimes I think if
I tried really hard I could
knock out power to a mid-
sized Southern city.

I regret nothing. Not the 
cocaine or the window of the
ice cream shop or the fact
that today I wore my cop-
kicking boots so I could kick
in the face of a cop.

I do not lament what I 
consumed in my quest to 
become all-consuming.
I am not sorry for 
eviscerating you on live television
as you announced your campaign for
                 San Francisco District 8 Supervisor.

And when sometimes I pause to
remember the loneliness of your
soft belly against the vast and
desolate Pacific my thoughts
become lineated in a cloudy way,
but that is easily brushed aside,
like stray Ponderosa pines,
or highway overpasses,
or heartbreak.

for the em dash 
 

if we could do our Reading over again I would say 
that your breaths between lines should not be so Obvious 
and I should have been friendlier to the Bartender — 

the Window-washers perform a ritual. better person, 
I say, crawl into your Light Fixture, your metadata are 
Revelatory or not // 

Diasporic nodules appear on the body of an artist &
it is Prophecy or it is indeed the entire breathing Organism 
of Manhattan itself — 

The warmth of the needle on Vinyl 
no longer a plausible Romance // so I postulate 
the Silence alive in your Headphones with the City 
all Boot-heels that echo on Sidewalk? 

Your metadata depict Me Emily Dickinson 
hailing a cab in an outer borough and it is spring or Whatever —

Maxine Anderson is chronically underemployed in New York.