Onward
Callista Buchen
Woman, turn your feet around.
Be asleep in your body. When you walk, act as if your arms are open windows, like your body is all mortar and brick. Woman, turn inward. Stretch into the crack.
When hands reach for your body, you cry out. They say, smile, woman. This time, you use all your teeth and snap. The dirt flies. You are so hungry.
Callista Buchen is the author of the full-length collection Look Look Look (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press) and the chapbooks The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press) and Double-Mouthed (dancing girl press). Her work appears in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals, and she is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award and DIAGRAM's essay contest.