Some Women
Terry Ann Thaxton
Could you be seduced without those women who start storms,
who fly above desks, who cling to wallpaper—those girls
who arrange their hair twelve times each day as if a hair pin
will save their necks? Some women have exceptional ways to note
the scars they collected as girls. Some women locked their bodies away,
as if a body could be a little wooden box sanded down and shellacked.
Some women found this to be a better choice. Put a lid on that face,
look the other way, are you a boy or a girl, is there suicide in your fingers?
Some women accumulate dog bites, while others are given acid
for their faces, bruises for the empty pots on their cheeks. Some women
are electric sockets. Some women are wings with skin, some blush
with fingers laced in glass. Did you get that memo? I scratch
the napkin on my eyelid as if it is a blade of grass, I mouth words into
a snake’s fangs. Some women take heaven apart and disappear into a storm.
who fly above desks, who cling to wallpaper—those girls
who arrange their hair twelve times each day as if a hair pin
will save their necks? Some women have exceptional ways to note
the scars they collected as girls. Some women locked their bodies away,
as if a body could be a little wooden box sanded down and shellacked.
Some women found this to be a better choice. Put a lid on that face,
look the other way, are you a boy or a girl, is there suicide in your fingers?
Some women accumulate dog bites, while others are given acid
for their faces, bruises for the empty pots on their cheeks. Some women
are electric sockets. Some women are wings with skin, some blush
with fingers laced in glass. Did you get that memo? I scratch
the napkin on my eyelid as if it is a blade of grass, I mouth words into
a snake’s fangs. Some women take heaven apart and disappear into a storm.
Terry Ann Thaxton has published two full-length collections of poetry, both from Salt Publishing: Getaway Girl (2011) and The Terrible Wife (2013), as well as a textbook, Creative Writing in the Community: A Guide (Bloomsbury, 2014). Her essay, “Delusions of Grandeur,” won The Missouri Review's 2012 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize. She's also published essays and poetry in Connecticut Review, Defunct, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, flyway, Sou’wester, Lullwater, Teaching Artist Journal, and other journals. Thaxton holds an MFA from Vermont College and teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida, where she also direct the MFA program.