My mother tells me I saved the teen phase
for my thirties, says I’ve waited all this time
to turn sour, rebel, rage against. My machine
was excavated years after it was made.
I was excavated years after I was made.
Years I spent quiet and girl and good in fear.
My mother tells me she’s scared I’m questioning
the existence of God. Tonight the angst rock
on the radio is His holy word. And beneath
this twilight sky, these heartless stars,
I do want the world to see me, for once,
because I’ve spent so much time underground,
under my tongue, which is not pierced
but bleeding from the press of my own teeth.
I pray they learn to bite other things,
things that have hurt me, things that never
should have touched me. My anger is
a scratched-up CD forever snarled inside
your car stereo. Yours. Because maybe
you thought this was over too, this swell
of holy shade as dark as her lipstick
or her nail polish or hers. This ember
I nursed like a precious egg. The mother
bird casting off her burnt feathers like sin.
–
M. Brett Gaffney holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Southern Illinois University. Her poetry chapbook Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press) was nominated for a 2019 Elgin Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. She works as co-editor of Gingerbread House Literary Magazine.