What Rough Beast | Poem for October 24, 2019

Simon Floris
My First Girl’s Geography

I study the map
of my first girl’s geography—
Lake Collarbone,
Pretty Mouth Spring,
Bosom Hills,
Ass Crack Creek,
Shoulder Slopes,
Ankle Mountain,
Point Elbow and Point Knee,
Pussy Canyon,
Cape Lips,
Hips Gulf,
Finger Peaks, Armpit Pits—
where my eyes go my lips go.

Her body is a desert made of gunpowder.
Her body is a milk lake, a Tasmanian devil,
Lemonade Land.
Pubic forest and armpit tundra.

Birdy eyes,
bruised-up shins,
motherly fingers,
complicit silence, slyness,
gender studies at Brisbane University,
misunderstanding.

Her body is all the wonders of nature
put together into five feet
and a few inches.
It’s everything I wanted
and it’s nothing I didn’t.

Her body was the shape of my hands.

Simon Floris was born in Rome to an Italian father and a Danish mother. He spent most of his childhood in Brussels, then moved to Beijing for high school, and he is currently studying Film and Television at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The poet writes, “This poem is about the Australian girl who took my virginity in Beijing, then fled to Brisbane two months later, many years ago.” Watch his first documentary video, Die Brück (2019), and find him on Instagram @simonofloris.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem, and you value the What Rough Beast series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.