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Escape of Choice
She swelled at two months
like red print of a slap
beating a rhythm on her face.
He offers his fist instead
of groceries, and she knows
this can happen more than once.
She has contracted. She has eased.
This is a lost baby poem.
He does not stop her from working,
taking out the garbage, going to class.
He does let her find a random condom
wrapper, snatches the phone from her,
ignores her open arms and laughs
at another bill.
No one admits this is wrong.
No one sees her leave or stops her.
She has contracted. She has eased.
This is a lost baby poem.
She comes back empty,
ready to fill her bags,
exit the guilt shattered by blows
with no beginnings except this one.
She runs out the door, escapes
one plot for her body.
She has contracted. She has eased.
This is a lost baby poem.
Infinite Arithmetic
Infinite arithmetic expands space,
concentric layers blow pulse into bejeweled
void housing Cassiopoeia’s dewy face,
diadem trimmed with glowing strands, starspool
Pinpoints wink, shimmer, shoot, hang tiny not loose
at lips and knees of the sky’s tart ladies.
Find stiff angle, fixed hypotenuse
providing eaves when nothing seems shady.
We need simple movement. Claim ambling walks
when the spinning world desires flesh and split
lips. Unclench secrets deeper than small talk
when imagination chooses quit,
unclamps its hands to let reality pass
then tell the darkness, “I love your blue-black ass.”
How to Be a Diaphragm
Stand stubborn as the domes
of capitals and courthouses.
Endure the jelly smeared on you
without squinting or gagging.
Turn flexible figure eight between fingers,
then push into an awkward bounce
on cool tile or bedroom parquet.
Patiently wait for fingers to find you.
Keep the circle of yourself taut,
as you were made to do.
Hold your breath under a woman’s pinch.
Open into an O exhaling against cervix.
Cling to the muscles tensing all around you.
Ask who knocks against your giving center
until a web of stars curls against your body.
Listen to them whimper a slow death
around your stalwart rim. Feel sorry
for their short, single-minded lives.
Hold their smell and the woman’s in your curve
so she remembers your anchor holding her
steadfast to an empty, fertile shore.
Hours later, accept the warm water and soap,
the careful drying. Settle into your hard pink tent,
lights out in the panty drawer. Know your next
journey is always unexpected.
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Tara Betts is a Cave Canem graduate and a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Tara's work has appeared in Essence, the Steppenwolf Theater production "Words on Fire," the stage adaptation of “That Takes Ovaries!”, Obsidian III, Callaloo, WSQ and Columbia Poetry Review. Her work is anthologized in Gathering Ground, Bum Rush the Page, The Spoken Word Revolution, Black Writing from Chicago, ROLE CALL, These Hands I Know, Hurricane Blues: How Katrina and Rita Ravaged a Nation, Home Girls Make Some Noise and Fingernails Across a Chalkboard. Her work will appear in Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets and Letters to the World .
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