Belly

Twenty-nine years of hating you.
At 3, I was told you stuck out and I'd never get a boy.
Age seven—I was utterly humiliated by you when my best friend's brother
poignantly pointed out that your rolls in my one piece swimsuit looked
like a hotdog complete with
bun.
I starved you for senior prom just so I could squeeze you into a dress
four sizes smaller than my
natural roundness.
College came and I pierced you—tattooed you thinking I could reclaim
you, have power over you and
the dreaded freshman fifteen.
So many stinging little hurts through thick and thin—uncaring men
asking "What the hell happened
to you?"
I hated you all the more.
Years later you began to swell from the promise of a child that never came.
Still you remained a betrayer; a Napoleon of flesh, conquering my very being.
I lived with this hatred for so long, I don't know how to feel.
Today, for no particular reason, I've decided to love you—
your roundness, protruding away from my hips.
I allow my lover to caress you as we spoon to sleep.
I am no longer ashamed of your dirty washtub ring left over from too
many birth control pills.
I'm not angry with you anymore, for you are not what defines me.
I will not let others judge me by you.
I acknowledge your presence and I accept you at 32, no longer 3.
You are a permanent part of me. Now. Here, I say it.
I love you and I love myself for accepting you as part of me.
My belly.

- Julia McPherson





Aesthetic Asylum

We wear our labels on our wrists—
Manic Depressive
instead of Bob Mackie
We're trotted out,
a runway of thieves,
liars and lunatics.
Posing for pills,
every story a half-truth
puzzle for Pavarroti physicians.
The smart ones get it over with early.
They don't shoot up their
wasted lives in plain site
like the rest of us—
a bulemic reaction
to all the attention.
No, they are the photo finish,
the head-shot for head shrinks,
cover story—news at 5.
They cut the chord quick
and are poster children
for the "unreachables".
Escape artists, faster than
Houdini's orderly.
Only we remain,
an endless tape loop of spliced Beta film.
Addicts, every last one,
to our own pain.

- Julia McPherson

cunt

The darkness pulling
ever toward that
dark chasm
where man quakes before you.
A slur,
hidden in folds
like grandmother’s linen.
A curse and
a blessing,
you give more than you take.

- Julia McPherson