Monica Lewis
lives in Brooklyn, New York and holds an MFA from Columbia University. Both her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Apogee Journal’s Perigee, and The Margins, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Boiler Journal, FIVE:2:ONE, PUBLIC POOL, Yes, Poetry, Flapperhouse, among others. She is a VONA/Voices alumna and a 2017 and 2018 “Best of the Net” poetry nominee. Her full collection of poetry, “Sexting the Dead,” will be published in 2021 by Unknown Press.
“how w(e)omen are born”
they say we are born,
a finite fistful of eggs,
and what about
the shells?
i am all shell, tender and crooked,
cracks tracing
the lifelines lived in the palm
of your hand, and
fingers splayed, branching
little dirt roads
going neither
here,
nor there.
green-skinned, i grow
both wishing i were
pink,
you take,
but i am seedless.
perhaps if planted
underwater
the pit
would take root,
to bloom, and we could
kiss, again,
like seventeen,
like endless.
a finite fistful of eggs,
and what about
the shells?
i am all shell, tender and crooked,
cracks tracing
the lifelines lived in the palm
of your hand, and
fingers splayed, branching
little dirt roads
going neither
here,
nor there.
green-skinned, i grow
both wishing i were
pink,
you take,
but i am seedless.
perhaps if planted
underwater
the pit
would take root,
to bloom, and we could
kiss, again,
like seventeen,
like endless.
