MAYDAY

When You’re Back
by Rachel Stempel

Contributed By:

Morning Drive
Image by Nandhu Kumar from Pixabay

When you’re back,

 

look 

to your left

 

there’s a great deal of it spread thin though

I’d like to scoop & saver, too,

 

slather on the skin I had at seventeen.

 

Bone dust setting spray keeps 

your ears pulled back 

 

keeps 

you younger than you need

 

a certain charm at that age I’m sure 

I didn’t have then 

I’ve not now nor 

ever. It’s the midmorning 

 

drive when I 

steamroll my mom’s first—

 

she calls a female cardinal not quite as beautiful.

 

The meat of you pierced, is drunk 

on something bad or deepthroating something worse. 

RACHEL STEMPEL is a genderqueer Jewish poet and educator. They were a finalist in the 2020 New Delta Review Chapbook Content, longlisted for the 2020 Fish Publishing Poetry Prize, and their work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Nasiona, New Delta Review, The Journal, Penn Review, Porter House Review, and elsewhere.

Filed Under: Poetry

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