Happy Trigger
Off-season and in
the burnt forest
of my nightgown, a feral
undergrowth that marks
me as burial site—
to be still enough or
just enough.
My arms become fat arms:
hearth. I eat dirt for doubt,
a secret bleached
old as lie. I out-want
like a spindly
winged monster.
If I were a bug—
were I—then you'd hope
for reparation, and paint
more brown into the plot.
Copyright Credit: Carmen Gimenez Smith, "Happy Trigger" from Milk & Filth. Copyright © 2013 by Carmen Gimenez Smith. Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.
Source: Milk & Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013)