The Women Compensate for Movements in Man

The subject’s body rotates
around a particular axis.

The first woman, noting
the fire beneath, says
something about the hills.

The second woman
has disappeared inside herself,
or elsewhere.

The third woman rejects the reality
of the subject, the body, the axis.
She searches, instead, for a bird.

The fourth woman screams
until her left lung collapses.

The fifth woman is an illusory after-effect.

I slip on my lab coat and stick my fingers
deep in the subject’s mouth.
 

ξ

Nicole Callihan’s books include SuperLoop (2014) and Translucence (written with Samar Abdel Jaber), and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (written with Zoë Ryder White, 2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), and Aging (2018). Her novella, The Couples, will be published by Mason Jar Press in summer 2019. Find her at www.nicolecallihan.com.