Leaving the Boxes
The boxes, they mocked me,
there in their corner, gathering
their dust, judgmental as some parlor auntie,
clingy as any old, bad memory.
Brittle old cardboard
just holding together
with dried-out brown packing tape—
dead letters from dead
fathers, dead lovers,
dead weight.
But now I have, I have done it—
never thought I could, never
was very good at traveling light.
I carry enough, sometimes
it seems like I carry it all
in the marks on my skin—
my scars, the heart tattoo
on my arm the little neighbor girl
shyly tells me she loves,
the dust in my lungs.
Let the old boxes go, then.
at long last in my rearview.
Let the dumped yellowing scraps
drift where they may. For today
I have quit my old claims, I feel
light, I tell you, I flutter, a wisp—
an air-kissed, downy, windborne white pinion—
That Kind of Girl
No lie—I almost
killed a man once
with my perfume
it was Hermès
he was a Marine
blond, blond curls
pale blue eyes
nine-inch dick
pink and white
like a peppermint stick
I’ve always tried
to be realistic even pragmatic
let’s face it I was never
one of those That Kind of Girl
pussy on her like an atom bomb
weapons-grade plutonium wondercunt
but I tell you for a second or two
when I had him gagging on me for a change
his little pink throat swelling shut—
I tell you I surely felt like one
for once, like Her, like That Kind of Girl
©2023 Joanna Grant All rights reserved.
Joanna Grant holds a Ph.D. in British and American literature, specializing in fictional as well as nonfiction travel narratives of the Middle East. She spent eight years in that region, notably two years in Afghanistan, teaching writing, mythology, and public speaking classes to American soldiers and gathering materials for her own memoir, which she is currently completing as part of an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Southern New Hampshire University under the direction of Mark Sundeen. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in journals including Guernica and Prairie Schooner.