community property
should i keep using my face to promote my writing or should i delete my face
do you think if i deleted my face people would be more or less inclined to find my work worthy of reading. do you think if i deleted my body it would be any better.
do you think that people are interested in my writing because i write about sex and sad things or because they can entertain a fantasy of having sex wth me. what would happen if my body ceased to be a sexual object, if i mummified myself into only the useful parts of the body: heart, lung, brain, hands. do you think that my husband would still love me, could the baby inside me still breathe. how would i give birth, do you think she would crawl through the sharp, desiccated remains of my dead birth canal or would she stay inside of me and calcify like a cold turnip. do you think if her body began to rot inside of me that i, too, would begin to rot. do you think that i could still use my body to sell my writing then?
i did my make up and i still look sad so i just sit there looking like a sad, made-up girl.
do you think the baby inside knows when I am crying
i feel a spiral turn in
monster among men
i don’t care about the ways in which my pregnant body becomes community property. in fact i welcome it. prod me. make me feel less alone.
tired of social signaling
tired of identity building
tired of perfect aesthetic
tired of internet always available
tired of social media
tired of facing the ever present mirror
tired of never being present
tired of seeing myself in others and hating them
puritanism is the denial of basic biological functions, the ways in which i am not here, not allowed to be here, public places hand on swollen belly, public says “she’s not wearing socks” public smokes a cigarette public forgets to change a dirty diaper public forgets your deleted face public deletes your body public deletes your body public deletes your body public produces a child
save the vinegar for the fatty kitchen towels. the liver crusted in your abdomen. we lick ice cubes like salt, pour baking powder in the beer. my hair a thick rope to hang myself with. it’s time to accept i will never be a beautiful young whore ever again.
the baby will be a girl. my body will disappoint them in every way. my body manifests her body and our bodies belong to public. she’s already tired of being everybody else’s girl. i will cry, and look forward to the day i can stop eating
Elle Nash is the author of Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books, 2018), and the chapbooks AVOKA (Ghost City Press, 2017) and i can remember the meaning of every tarot card but i can’t remember what i texted you last night (Nostrovia Press, 2016). She is a founding editor at Witch Craft Magazine, a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp, and lives in the Ozarks.