Art Ticker

Shakthi Shrima

Self-Portrait in Closet

Again I escape the sun’s wide hands. I slump into the old brown
couch. I open my screen, again. Again, the women. Again

my wanting. I could never watch the slick and drip
of their bodies without becoming taut, my body

a rubber band snapping against its own skin, unstopping.
Sometimes I’d pause just before their mouths met

or gasped, so I could study them forever pinched
in a moment of reaching. As though

they could be studied. Though it grew easier
to watch them knowing they couldn’t see me––

I would practice their moans, the sound sharp as hard candy
glancing off the edge of a jar, their sticky splinter. I thought

that if I could make a sound like that,
I’d startle open like a scab. The sting of it

the yes my body had learned without me,
the softest of yeses. In the mirror I unbuttoned my shirt

to see if my body would show me its yes. I wondered
if I could be pretty only when I didn’t want it.

Like when I saw a man watch me for the first time,
I was sure his eyes must be a yes my body didn’t know.

When I turned away he turned my cheek
back into his hand. He did not blink. Watched like that,

I felt brilliant as gums after pulled teeth. And when he reached
into me, my refusal churned in my stomach like a star. I turned

over as quick as I could. I pressed my nose into the pillow,
held it tight. My sweat stained his sweat; my bone throbbed

into bone. I breathed, exhale stabbed
into the pillow’s softness. I breathed. I could not see him.

Shakthi Shrima‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Muzzle Magazine, BOAAT, inter|rupture, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Tinderbox, amongst others. Shakthi Shrima has appeared or is forthcoming in her unmade bed. She reads for the Adroit Journal, and currently lives in Munich.




(Visited 1,698 times, 1 visits today)

2 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Exceptional Poetry From Around the Web: August 2018 | Frontier Poetry - A Platform For Emerging Poetry
  2. Being Human Is Hard (& Other Thoughts): End-Of-September Reading List | Word & Sole

Comments are closed.