HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BITCH PLEASE Poem by Marianne Morris

Once I found out that American Apparel was shutting down I
knew it was safe to go in and browse. I did not purchase
the jumpsuit because I remembered the time you
kicked me in the stomach wearing it, but
once I knew the code I used it a lot -
tried it in every online checkout, mixed it into my hair, rinsed
my hips in it, and called out the promise can for what it is, empty -
and like a bald eagle rising from his metallic chair,
or from the rocks embedded in my skull,
our heads met and kissed.
Then, much later,
after I had started the initiations, which mostly consisted
of gritting my teeth and/or crying through the knife
point of each thought I was sticking into myself,
the vulture aired
its wings on the fence
post on the path and I stood
still to let time move.
Another time the vulture was
a man bending over my mouth with his cave
mouth open, what if all of time is
happening all at once, what does that mean
about the wound, it means that it
becomes, like everything else,
unreal because
I unplug myself from it, I am
all intention. Intend to unplug from it, am
all attention, attending
to the calm places, like my lungs,
belly, forearms, armpits, back of neck, the stress
places bones, joints, hinges where I had once been all
right with bending. The reason autoimmune diseases
are more likely to happen to a woman is because
the hinges on a woman are stressed more,
the researcher speculated, and where,
I asked him, are the men? Are the man on the land?
Conduct yourself, a current of yourself, how you want it to flow.
Unplug myself, so I can dive into you, it
isn't romantic, explode you with light, you are an old
principle. Your
dust is fanatic,
I just exit,
exist.