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I’m talking about
the bent spoon, cracked cup.
I’m talking about the broom,
Mother, her black dress. I mean:
flying over the handlebars of my bike
and Benji, who said I couldn’t play
because I was barefoot

and how later I hated my feet,
also my legs, my teeth, my hair, my knees, my breasts —

I’m saying: these things add up to a woman who moves small in a body disowned
but large in the mind where arms —
arms are wings, muscled wings, and she rides the wind down.

She circles, drops quickly.
She pierces the eye with her hard yellow beak.

— Lori Wilson

Lori Wilson is the author of the poetry collection House Where a Woman (Autumn House Press, 2009). Her poems and reviews have also appeared in Women’s Review of Books, Southern Poetry Review, Salamander, Kestrel, Cerise, 5 AM and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the MFA Program in Poetry at Drew University. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on 90.5 FM.