I am more than interlaced        fingers,

a tangle of limbs

 

As I get older, I am learning

the difference between

 

words that are blue and words that      are

dark like the insides of people—

 

Clots and handfuls of flesh

that are more than my gender,

 

more than my wild ankles

with the bones round and clear like planets

 

The arsenal is the judgement of

my womanhood—

 

I was never a person with blood on her hands,

never the

domestic

type

 

A creation, I was an infant child born in the middle,

a girl in a brother’s clothing

 

Words have meaning, despite what

people say

 

Now is a time when the

 

punishment for everything is

death

 

by Kristin LaFollette

 

Kristin LaFollette received her BA and MA in English and creative writing from Indiana University. She is a PhD student in the English (Rhetoric & Writing) program at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in West Trade Review, Poetry Quarterly, Lost Coast Review, Slipstream Press, The Light Ekphrastic, The Main Street Rag, and River Poets Journal, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum, Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Spry Literary Journal. She lives with her husband in northwestern Ohio. You can visit her at kristinlafollette.blogspot.com.

 

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