A Girl’s First Lesson as a Medium, and: South Paws, and: Tafisha Counts Her Attempted Rapes Like Stars and Charts Them
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A GIRL’S FIRST LESSON AS A MEDIUM
No, Ilya, if you speak for the deadyou must dwell in your body
as you dwell in the houseof the Lord in silence
and under duress. You mustinhabit the body like a virus.
You must metabolize the chatterof cranium and femur at the bottom
of the sea, offer a praise songto the birthing pains
of the passage which will governyour life as a god. The dead
you presume to representdo not delight in parts of speech.
What is a noun to the body unboundby salt and current? The knife
is medium and message,I should know.
Blood the currency exchangedfor speech. [End Page 616]
SOUTH PAWS
Michelle never taught me to fight a man what I needed to learn most.At sixteen she pushed a boy into a ditch, kicked his ribs like loose stones onan unpaved road. At nineteen she knocked a man’s teeth into that ditch like loose change bouncing offa paved road. At eighteen I kicked a boy in the face, his jaw split open like a door. I am twenty five and keep a razorunder my tongue. I tell her this over ginger tea. She laughs calls me warrish; “That’s how I know you are mine.” [End Page 617]
TAFISHA COUNTS HER ATTEMPTED RAPES LIKE STARS AND CHARTS THEM
15. Raleigh.14. No one is coming to shatter the passenger window.13. The fist in my mouth is a sponge soaked in spit.12. He calls it love then calls me love.11. Washington D.C.10. “No” a prayer offered to my preoccupied god.9. “Stop” a meditation on the bruises visiting my waist.8. “Please.”7. Brooklyn.6. Almost witnesses: grandma, dad, first cousins 1 through 4.5. My nightgown wrestles a hand in the dark, loses.4. This nightgown is a pink found only in girlhood.3. In my girlhood No was not allowed.2. “If you make noise I’ll tell.”1. I am still afraid to yell. [End Page 618]
TAFISHA A. EDWARDS is author of The Bloodlet (winner of Phantom Books’ 2016 Breitling Chapbook Prize). Her work has appeared in a number of periodicals, including The Offing, PHANTOM, Bodega Magazine, The Atlas Review, The Little Patuxent Review, and in other print and online publications. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for Gigantic. She lives in Washington, DC.
