Dear pink genital, you alone oblige me.
Meanwhile no one writes. This hand is tired,
I tell the sky. Where is the fleet, where
the horizon? I can hardly lift my head
to see the small, sand-colored shapes
waving from their buggies like maggots.
It’s a picture from childhood,
that faraway, that sweet.
Dear old friend, all this time it was you
calling my name in strange places.
Dear physic, I’m sicker than you are strong.
Bring word to your brothers and sisters:
the villagers are hostile and inside me.
Somewhere in the distance there’s fire.
God is a Mathematician and in My Dreams
Listen:
God is a mathematician and in my dreams
I’m held down while my head is wrapped in netting
and strangers lick between my legs and laugh.
Then my legs are bent into various triangular shapes
and their degrees measured and recorded with tiny pencils
and photographed for an award-winning text book.
Only a mathematician would let that happen.
Only a mathematician would force me
to the front of the room when I didn’t know
the answer to a problem thereby requiring me to draw
a picture of the male anatomy, bulbous and hairy,
in order to maintain my pride, control, and honor. I rode
your 8th grade chalkboard like a fucking horse, my horse,
my stallion, and even today, Mr. Company, I reject
the equation you have left like a week old dinner for me
to eat and eat at your wicked and loveless table.
The Pilgrim on the Shore
Listen:
Bridget Lowe's poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Best American Poetry, The Collagist, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She received a "Discovery"/Boston Review prize and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship to The MacDowell Colony. Her first book of poetry is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press in early 2013. She lives in Kansas City.