Sanjana Nair
Girl
There’s a copper
in my pocket
that was once just lump
God’s penny in trade, born to
marry/be married/have married my
self to a wish in another person that
defies reason. Reason this:
the human male is capable
the human male is a killer
the human male is unsure and wants
the same way the female does.
It isn’t that I am petty or mean or too interested
in my own sex to notice yours, or want yours, it’s just
that this sex is too angular, too crooked in its lines
pinning a girl like some poor insect, a butterfly for the taking
before she is woman enough to realize the distance
to what is real for her is vast. When I see a penny
I think about luck and it seems that I’m the lucky one
some days, deciding on titles and words and names for things.
Trust me, dear reader: I would agree to disagree but you need not believe me.
We would agree on nothing. All these words and you still might not see me.
Sanjana Nair’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Fence Magazine, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, and The Equalizer. In a prior lifetime, she was part of a performative series in NYC named Emofru and The Lady Apple. Her collaboration between poet and composer was performed at Tribeca’s Flea Theater as well as featured on NPR’s Soundcheck. Nair lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter, and is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).
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