REASSIGNMENT ABECEDARIAN
Zeroing in on monstrosity means
you relinquish the blade, the need for definition—
x’s decorating your forehead, your jaw.
We study the girls we wish to become.
Voice sunk in this
unbearable temperature. You inhale the perfume / one claw
turns back to knuckle. Scalpels
slice a body bag to locate the monstrous inside.
Raised on grey matter—your order to
question shadows’ borders on conventional walls—dreams
pull water from wells built of bricklike
obedience. Otherwise
names fail the function of currency as meaningless
metal exchange, dressing your ghost in
lace and late language. Dreams of the surgeon
knitting bone back together make a grammar of swelling
joints, sepsis—language for the risk in every recognition
if and when your sutures dissolve.
How our mothers, moved past perversion, aren’t like
God casting his stones—they
find a price for the horror
eating memories of your gowns revoked:
Diagnosing beauty by the dim heat
closets hold
before smashing a glass plate
against your already-broken nose.
DEAR PATRON SAINT OF THE SPIRAL
—————
Daphne DiFazio is a poet, performer, and editor. Recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her writing can be found at daphnedifazio.com and appears in shitwonder, DIAGRAM, Poetry Online, bath magg, and Foglifter, among other publications. She will join the Michener Center for Writers as a fellow in poetry this fall.