I fit effortlessly into the cigarette
pocket of your shirt like a stuffed doll.
It’s easy to set me there—my mess
of anatomy, a heart shifted up and over
a shoulder like a vagabond’s sack.
They’ll call you a witch for this,
you remind me, fastening your lips
to my flesh, sucking existence from me
as I dream I am someone else, Venus
standing seductively on a half shell—
the clam hugging its calcium mouth
around me, enclosing my perfect
skeleton in its architecture. I want to be
kept just as anyone wants to be—
crushed by 4,000 newtons of force,
relished by hungry sea bugs
eating through the white.
–
Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been published in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Redivider, Poet Lore, Louisiana Literature, and CALYX. “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest. She is currently a member on the editorial board for Off the Coast.