Recumbent Pudica by J.L. Lapinel
I was spit out the other end
of an arrogance high
a confident saunter
into adult separation
as if peeling the dysfunction from my skin
would lead to a cellular replacement
Now a renewed adolescent
I yearn for the small angled reflective pieces
of a dissolving (dys)funhouse
No, you wouldn’t fit through the keyhole
it’s made custom
for my skeletal remains
My mother wore the key
from a beaded utility chain
as if a firm pull of it
would illuminate
and burst
the Dali day-to-day
The drape of my balletic gesture
the last remnant
of a taffy existence
regurgitating
between the clicks of double A battery
powering so many clocks
There are faint deep-voiced hints
-tearing through my grey fabric-
of the rulebook being read aloud
to my slow developing drums
the
off with her head
and knights, two-dimensionally
narrowly
avoiding that I exist
The flying simians
and pretty poppies
mortaring the layers
of foundational acceptance
that otherness
will get me killed
That if I tuck myself
smaller smaller
into cornered wombs
the hands lips fingers and fists
will swarm by unnoticed
and I will laugh, with heaving
having stolen a small piece
of myself
they couldn’t touch
but I can’t help feeling
that
I’m late I’m late
for something really important
-my father repeated-
but the clocks are all
in recumbent pudica
and I can’t remember
where I hid
that last piece

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J.L. Lapinel is a Latinx writer and educator from Manhattan who is presently an MFA candidate at UMass Amherst. Her work appears in Yellow Arrow Journal, The Wellington Street Review, Cambridge Collection and North American Poetry Review among others. J.L.’s work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. She can be found on Twitter @jelelasp.

