Pick It Out, It Hurts
BY Kodi Saylor
I smell it,
tobacco & Campho-Phonique—
a memory that hurts.
Peeling white pulp from a squeezable body,
I eat an orange.
I’d have preferred that night to possess
policemen—just tender human beings with guns.
Is it rape or
not rape? That’s ALL
I need to know—she said
after class on the subway home.
Not me, I want
a western view—a sunset
in flexible pink
through the windshield of a ford
key in ignition
hands on wheel
Bathing in a square of sun,
I curl up on the wood floor.
Bells ring.
My hands failed
to craft
the [ ]
in image but got
dappled bits of sun
damn right.
Kodi Saylor received her MFA in poetry at New York University where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her poems have appeared in Axolotl Magazine and Blue Mesa Review. She currently works at the Undergraduate Library in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.