12-13-2023
Connie Post
AUTO IMMUNE
One part of the body
turns against the other
reacts as if an enemy
has invaded
the war against
friendly fire
goes on for years
possibly decades
one doctor
after another
gives pills in doses
unrecognizable to
your broken mouth
late at night you read
one medical article
after another
trying to understand
why the armed forces
attacked a sovereign
place in the body
you toss and turn
the siege goes on
you sleep
you love
you banish yourself
from your own bed
you watch yourself
line up words
inside your mind
a small army
encroaching
from afar
CITADEL
This is not your body
it does not belong to you
it is not the one
that left the sallow rooms of home
circa 1980
never to return
this is not the body
who entered the hallway
of a college dormitory
and knew not a soul
who carried English books
like a soldier carries ammunition
this is not the body
that left the same college town
pregnant with a son
with a man you knew
would someday leave
this is not the body
who gave birth and
bid farewell to a womb
who carried two babies
this is not the body
who falls into anesthesia
and counts the stitches like shame
this is not the body
you return to
each murky dusk
this is the body you were told to smite
this is the body you hid inside
this is the body you cradled
this is the body
that knows the sound of a belt
removed before a beating
this is the body that knows
how to leave
like a song rising from nothing
like music leaving a cathedral
ROUGH SEX
Because
you never of thought of it
as rough
because even while inside you
he can’t reach the part of you
that is holy
because if you asked him,
to let go of your wrists
he would
because begging for more
is always
consensual
even when your bones
are nailed to your own oppression
because
you said it was okay
while you were suffocating
because you still have
to sleep next to him
because there is a
gag order underneath the mattress
because your mouth
becomes an elegy
in the middle of the night
because there is a séance
imbedded in the ritual
of sleep
and the night
will never tell you
how long it takes
to drown in your own starlight
-from Between Twilight, selected by Assistant Editor, Karen Carr
Connie Post is a San Francisco Bay Area Poet who has been writing and publishing for over thirty years. Her work has received praise from Al Young, Ursula LeGuin, Ellen Bass, Maxine Chernoff, Dean Rader, Diane Suess, and former US Poet Laureate Juan Herrera. Her first full length collection “Floodwater” was the winner of the 2014 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Her second full length collection “Prime Meridian” was released in January of 2020. (Glass Lyre Press) Prime Meridian was a finalist in the 2020 Best Book Awards, 2021 International Book Awards and the 2020 American Fiction Awards. (American Book Fest). Prime Meridian was selected as a distinguished favorite in the 2022 Independent Press Awards. Her most recent full length collection “Between Twilight” was published by New York Quarterly books in 2023. She has three chapbooks. The first two are from Finishing Line Press “And When The Sun Drops” and “Trip Wires”. Her most recent chapbook, “Broken Metronome” was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2023. It was named a distinguished favorite in the NYC Big Book Awards and was the winner of the 2023 American Fiction Awards (American Book Fest) for a poetry chapbook.
