Retrospect
Years laced with gauze, with bias cuts and paper cuts,
fringed dresses, singed fingers. Layered like macadam,
onion and ocean, paint and plaster and earth. Armorless
she clamored toward the door, down steps steep and slick
that disappeared in twos, then threes, between leaping
and landing shame-soaked, snakebite-swollen: this is how
she learned to scream. Years like photos taken inside a handbag,
gray and accidental, reeking of mace. No longer the girl
wishing to be older, running and scowling and being thrown,
who smokes between classes, perfects a poker face.
She won’t be disappointed. In false lighting the room
spins planetary: a world enamored, tinged with the promise
of a poison pill or miracle berry. A world that craves
a glimpse, wants her maskless, a world that insists.
Liza Katz is an alumna of Boston University and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and an ESL teacher in Boston. Her poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Burlesque Press, the Critical Flame, the Quarterly Conversation, and Arts Fuse.