As a girl in Troy, I am no Helen
by Suzanne Honda
I don’t want to be touched would rather castrate
you say life is love & love blessing & blessing safe
but love is so hard to remember & safe is a four letter word
so hard to remember that July the fireworks blew the sky
to bits & I bent my head back until the world was a dome
again, dark atmosphere a sheath which one of us was the knife?
we drifted again, dark atmosphere a sheath, one of us the knife
Phish tangled between us Joy, incredible shimmering
he thought he loved me on the floor in his basement
he thought he loved me in his green State hoodie how small
I was & he already broken oh, it makes me tired
remembering his whisper I will never be good
I will never be good, either remember he thought he loved me
I took into the dark that sex is not peace it’s too specific
and so much grief & love what is love
a comedy of errors circling back to honesty we go
where the truth lies prostrate slit its throat castrate
some want to be touched but I don’t
Listen to the full poem here.
 | Suzanne Honda, poet and author of the chapbook, When We Were Birds (Porkbelly Press, 2022), was born and raised in Metro Detroit. A lover of water and birds, her work is a meditative study of spirituality as experienced through the senses, viewed through the lens of nature. She was recently selected as an International Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2022 International Poetry Competition. Her work is published and/or forthcoming in Soundings East, SWWIM Every Day, Crab Creek Review, and more. |