2 poems by Holly Coleman

How to Leave Your Body

You will want a ritual, but you do not need one. There is no spell to loosen the ligaments that

bind you to your father’s grammar, your mother’s worry, the country that taught you your face is a border. You leave your body the way a house leaks heat: slowly, then all at once, then not at all, because you were never entirely inside it.

Begin by forfeiting decorum. It was never yours; only the lease you signed when you learned to sit still while someone else spoke. Forget stillness. Forget deference. If your voice trembles, let it. If it grows teeth, feed it.

Let the social temperature drop. Let it fracture your certainty that you must be liked to be free. Refuse apology, except to yourself. Refuse the soft instructions that insist this is just how things are.

There is nothing inevitable about the skin you were told to stay in. Step out the back door. Leave it cracked for the next one longing to slip through.

When they come looking, be elsewhere: at the edge of a crowd, nodding at no one in particular. Holding nothing but your chosen name, pronounced any way you please.

i still check your horoscope

i still check your horoscope

as a fix

every morning

an illicit compulsion

that feels like a prayer

twice whispered aloud

a ritual

a summoning

just in case

humor may arrive from unexpected sources

i tilt the words like a dirty glass

searching for your fingerprints

somewhere you are laughing

arguing with god about syntax

in the back booth of some celestial dive

take space today if you need it

mine reads

& i do

& i don’t

what do you call a lie

that kneels before you

and begs

to be believed

your mind is responding in the best way it can

yes

still.

_____________

Holly Coleman lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Her writing has appeared in Full Stop, On The Rag, Tough Poets Review, and other places. She teaches writing at the University of North Florida and is a Ph.D. student at Old Dominion University, where she studies British Romanticism and the rhetoric of art and activism. You can find her @hollycaroline.