My body: a puppet for anyone to cry through--
comfort defined as pressed ears
against the space between my breasts or hands
cupping a jaw like fresh water. Marionette me
as many times as you need to keep breathing.
I’ll breathe too: absorb the carbon dioxide you
exhale. You understand I mean this when I say love.
*
To sever my strings & numb
your deltoids, you feed me half-
formed arguments-- I regurgitate.
You won’t donate a hand
to prop open my ashtray mouth, naked
to what might emerge: wooden
torso--rotted under rain--
or verbal scab-over you’ll pick clean
when I stop looking--
*
When the hinge in my jaw loosens,
collect each screw as it falls.
When I am so splintered
neither of us can speak: I will still lie
at your bedpost, refrain
from pricking, & be anything
your body heat can cling
against—still warm.
Chrissy Montelli is a current MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also works in Student Affairs. Her poems have been published in The Adirondack Review, Gandy Dancer, and elsewhere. She is originally from Long Island, NY, and was once bullied by The Washington Post for blogging about poetry not being dead. Find her on twitter.
