Peep Show
They told me to act like a girl, so I licked
their palms clean; told me I had an eye for detail,
so I plucked my own body hair one by one
and sewed them into curtains.
They told me to make myself useful,
so I took out an empty pen and drew blood.
They told me to list myself last, so I didn’t
list myself at all; told me to embody the feminine,
so I became a one-man circus.
They told me to stay away from myself,
so I free-bled on the mattress; told me
to stay away from myself so I lit
the tablecloth on fire, burnt their dinners.
They told me to speak like a lady, so I sat
on my tongue riding each wave.
They told me I’m not to be trusted;
told me to carve an apple, so I gnawed it down
to a string, swallowing its seeds.
did they tell you I was beautiful?
do you know
about the garbage bags
I stole from the kitchen pantry,
some warmer than others, planted
in my childhood bedroom,
a garden of slouching bulbs
filled with stomach soup
resurrected in my hands——
each one a different shade of rotten brown.
how the bags would droop
when hoisted like a giant’s teardrop,
how they’d hold what once was mine,
even if they’d sometimes split.
did they tell you
I lived this way for years,
how a skeleton clawed its way out
from underneath.
did they tell you
my room stank of a graveyard,
moist and stale, the floorboards
softening with each leak.
that one day I fell through
and landed
flat on my back in the pantry,
hands placed over my heart.
Jessica Ballen, MFA, is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet serving as a guest editor for Frontier Poetry and is on the reading board for Sundress Publications. Previously, they have served as Editor in Chief of Lunch Ticket and Managing Editor of Defunkt Magazine. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day, RHINO Poetry, and Okay Donkey (among others). Catch them compulsively posting on their Instagram stories @jeez_ballen, listening to dream pop with their four cats, and dancing in the Willamette River with their writer husband, Steven H. Turrill. Their favorite feud in pop culture is the ongoing one between Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain. The mothers keep fighting!
