Poems for Sissy
by Megan D. Henson
for Sarah Lee Henson
I.
i have something important to say
i tell my class
but can’t remember what
and stare blankly
at them and their cell phones
at the rain washing the big windows
of this multi-million dollar building
if i wrote a love letter to myself
i would say take it easy
then erase it
and see if erasure leads to dementia
i would turn it into a butterfly
or a carrier pigeon
with lilies tied to its leg
i would look at my class just once
just once
in order to have something to forget
then turn around
and never look back
II.
she daydreams she’s dead
without touching sadness
file cabinet drawers slam shut
click lock click lock
all day long
like being in a morgue
the cold metal drawers
the cold corpses
cussing the copier
two more hours, then
back-to-back traffic
glassy blue eyes
lit by fluorescent bulbs now
lit by headlights
plug one hole after another
to keep the thin oily sanity
of an anxious humanity
from leaking out
this is the ecology of our times
yet one fine golden hair caresses her cheek
imagine a microcosm of a world there
an ecosystem of warm meadows
III.
she may stand at the copier now and wonder why she hasn’t had a date but don’t worry your pretty little golden head kitten because it all ends in haunting a damp hotel room listening to the patter of rain on your skull dome the rain always gets in the rain always gets in just like how in your mind the semen will always get in through the condom because you will tell yourself you are bad that you deserve to contract some disease and the bible in the wooden nightstand reminds you of the bible in the back of the wooden pew in front of you in church when you were little and you are dirty and impure and now you have some terrible disease and will need to get checked but you are too shy to ask the doctor and you will blush so hard your eyes water—
this is the way
i worried
when i became
a
woman
IV.
when she was three
she was in love with John Denver
now she has a geology degree
which entails licking crystals
in colorado coors country
she has gems in her gut
in her intestines river rocks
she pans her spinal fluid
but it’s not gold she seeks
it’s space
space between the bones
space between the stones and her stomach
that space where the solar system circles
in the darkness
and sometimes
she’s almost there