When I was a woman I laid down in the bed I made for the roses and prayed I would bloom
Into the soft morning all orange all
milkweed and honeysuckled breast, the world is
damp green and smelling of moss and iron the world
Licks your teeth for you, sets your jaw for another blow and so
When I was a woman I knocked on the door of an Argentine home and demanded to be reborn
Where boys make kite workshops of weedy lots, put to sky newspapers
that fly corrugated tin to New York’s Babel towers
Strange things happen here
Luisa cracked open my chest cavity and out came dinosauric foliage, the plume of a rare bird and I
Was a woman birthed into the badlands of language
where all ritual is secretion-blood from the womb is blood on the cross-
the word I use is damned the
word I mean is sanctified.
Now I am a woman and pressed
petal to page, dried
in the bed only my thorns bloomed.
Author: Sarah Rosangela
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Sarah Rosangela is a poet, essayist and producer of “I Hate the News” podcast, a weekly show about art, culture and anything but politics. Her first poetry collection, “We Grew Wild Once,” was released in 2016. Her work can be found in “Unvael Magazine” and her monthly newsletter “The High Art of Making Toast.” In 2017 she collaborated with Lululemon to create community-based art experiences including “The Air Out There” pocket poetry project and the Worth100 Women’s Symposium.
Link to social media or website: Instagram @sarahrosangela
