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Purple
BY BRYNNE REBELE-HENRY
Homeschooled, ’18
2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Runner-Up
I hide the body
in my mouth:
I am not a girl,
not a dinosaur.
Candy canes, Papa
and his corsets.
Mama pulls her hair
over her mouth.
Inside: cocaine,
small birds.
When I was ten
we hibernated,
pulled our skins apart
and glued them
with sequins
and mama’s Chanel no. 5.
He tasted like cancer.
She closes her eyes,
her nose a red sunset
of places we haven’t been.
My ankles make bruises
on his calves:
the spaces where
our bodies don’t connect.
“Purple’s immediacy and sensuality caught my attention, and held it. From its startlingly visceral opening to its synesthetic metaphors, Purple is a gorgeous and strange adventure I want to relive over and over again.”
– Tarfia Faizullah, 2015 Poetry Prize Judge