When I Turned Sixteen

And achieved some of the greatness young girls
aspire, outgrowing my childish body—that lanky,
long-thorned thing—and became a woman,
with hips and thighs and cup-able breasts,
enough to fill a grown man’s hands, my mother
bought me a new pair of pants. My father
must have been drinking that day, for when
I tried them on, he grabbed me from behind
and screamed with a shrill, excited, bird-like
call, sliding in his socks behind me, as if
I were a carnival. I twisted free, fled upstairs,
and locked myself in my room, spending
the rest of that friendless night alone, my face
wet against the pillow, bereft in a comfortless dark.

*

Lisa Low was first runner-up for the Shakespeare Prize at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work has been shortlisted for Ploughshares and has appeared in or is forthcoming in many literary journals including The Adroit Journal, The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Southern Indian Review, Conduit, The Hopkins Review, and ONE ART. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2025. Her chapbook, Late in the Day was issued in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.