JESSICA LAWSON

Beauty Tutorial

I am fuckable to the extent                 there is harvest.

Open compact in face of the tree                    you know the one by beating

men with sticks against me            I face the heavy fruit       they are punishing      my needy gut.

Shadows my eyes, thank you             to the better men, slowly        fingering the overripe

taking photos of one another feeding me          prove their feminism dribbling down my chin.

I am a kind of rationed           beautiful that can’t              feed herself, but would.

For the purpose of helping me        better men keep my arms      pinned with their unfruited hand.

Poem about lingerie

i adjust in the mirror
as i work to determine which of these two thongs
will make me look
less like a human car wash

take a pounding made to make it
new to shine you
shining on you these hips
and late night phone calls when morning gives me no kindness
each of these is a piece
of work

if not to make it better what
are kisses even really

i have this carefully waxed autoclave
you thrust guilt into
i tell you a story with private muscles
how you come
into evidence
by any sadness you have offered
of being a good man
just for having tried

my ass is covered
in lacework violence
against the women you have
done this to already

my heaviest flesh is sentenced for you
in these support garments
i enunciate, muffle,
insert joke about feminism
and grammar fails to burn

half the time i say sorry out of recognition
that someone, at least, ought to

Jessica Lawson is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has appeared in Entropy; The Fanzine; Yes, Poetry; Cosmonauts Avenue; The Wanderer; FLAG + VOID; and elsewhere. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and an MFA from CU-Boulder, where she served as an editor for Timber Journal. Her manuscripts and chapbooks have placed as finalists with Nightboat, New Delta Review, and Dream Pop. She lives and teaches in Colorado.