Babies
for Lori

It was a year of great change.
My nervous system exploded.
Fluids got inserted.
I got an iconic French bob
and my life was saved
by a woman named Kimberly.

When I entered the salon
Lori saw my will.
She had known
the kingdom of my childhood.
I sat still while she cleared away
the late-blooming sun
colored mantle.

Meanwhile snow made holes
in the “New You Salon.”
Through them was the other
white ceiling. The strip mall clinic
with the diagram
of my supposed body. When I laid down
Kimberly said, This is easier
because you’re so thin.

Then she drew the curtain
between my mother and me.

Or sometimes I went to Karen’s office,
which was dim and I wasn’t
getting much sleep, so while
hickies appeared along my spine
I became very still,
a dog under a blanket.
She constantly asked what I wanted,

unlike Lori who wouldn’t listen
and each month raised the hem
off an inch of my lower forehead.
All year we fought
over my lower forehead.
She said I had what was called
baby bangs.

One night I stood outside the strip mall
and prayed.
My mood ring said ‘sensual’
but I swear I wasn’t.
Only the cool hand of night
against my embarrassment.
The things I could no longer
refuse to allow.
Today I wore the babies

down my street. Under them
I was as beautiful as she believed.

*

Winter Sun

January 27. Three men love me this week. None of them
are the man I love. He and I loved summer but we were born into nights
like a closed mouth. When I got laid down by stomach pains I thought,

Maybe I’m gathering strength for my birthday. But the blood
was only going. Room for new blood? Three women want me
to throw them around but all I want is to be held down

and done-to, like compression therapy, or when I got a fever
and was defeated by the thought that my life is soft,
and will remain soft forever. I want to make decisions,

take my neighbors, when those fire alarms kept going
they simply moved next door. Maybe my life isn’t soft it’s a series of walks
to other people’s rooms. Each time we broke up, for example, I had a fit

when I looked around the room I would never again enter. Bevel
of his back muscle, chiming of her wall. In place of those omens, I repeat
Something big is going to happen. But when the moment comes,

I say nothing. Still my decision looks good on me,
hangs well like heavy jeans. All I want is to get looked at
or else to be two eyes floating in a room.

If I was, could I still say something? My mother says
when I was born the flakes came down in shiny white tufts,
and the sun was white, the snow emitting that blinding white brightness
that renders you speechless and leaves your heart clean.

*

Marlena Brown is a poet from Michigan. Her work has appeared in HIKA and SWAMP and won the Brown University Rose Low Rome Prize for Poetry. She previously served as managing editor at The Round out of Providence, Rhode Island. She writes about lamps and dogs.