Photo by Aaron Burden
Disgust is relative, and our cookie dough
bodies should not be judged against the corsets
into which we pour ourselves in season.
Those corsets aren’t real, aren’t anymore here
than that imaginary friend who left,
echoing our (where is he?) father’s baffled
reasons. The corset is a picture in
a magazine—which is to say, an image
in our heads—and nothing so artificial
as grafting flesh to form. Then why, precisely, are
we here? Why am I drawing these weights,
these plastic drumsticks to my chest? Why bright?
Why looping nausea, why love? Why am I
delighted by the least of nods? Why enough?
Why should this paltry choreography make
for anything but interim? You know
desire bounds against the rubber track,
it springs against expected pace, it palls—
and blanks the body from the page. It’s not
the kind to serve honed quads and ears besides.
It’s not—desire—anything at all.
The Author
Kate Polak is a professor and writer. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Barzakh, and elsewhere. She lives in Yellow Springs with her husband and five familiars, and has painted her house to resemble a jack-o’-lantern.
Kate Polak
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