You Are A Dark Body by Natalie Scenters-Zapico

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 6, 2016   You Are a Dark Body   Natalie Scenters-Zapico

of water with a bed of rock barely visible from your surface. You are the only dark body   of water in a desert littered with bleeding cactus. At your collarbones you carry a gulch, held up by a thread   of hair. You travel days drinking only from yourself, because you are this land's only dark body   of water. At the crease of horizon you find a woman in bed, her chest wet with saliva, you kick her   off the bed, and take her place among its sheets. A man lies down in bed next to you. He swallows your dark body   of water and gives you a woman's body, a body you've never known. As a woman he gives you sores, and through   the sores you breathe, and despite the sores you give birth to a child stillborn for lack of water. You kick the child off   the bed, but it returns in the arms of the woman whose bed you stole. You cry to be made again into a dark body   of water. The man kicks you off the bed, covers you with dirt, and turns you desert. You cry for a bed he will never   let you sleep in again. You cry for your body's bed of rock turned desert for lack of water.            Copyright © 2016 Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I grew up in the Chihuahuan desert and have felt the kind of thirst only extreme dry heat can bring. In moments when I've longed for water most I think of how my body is made of so much water, and how the same earthly compound I yearn for could drown me.  This poem is about thirst and how a life of thirst then quenched with a fistful of water can make you contend with all the women you could have been, the children you could have had, and the ever-changing body you are given."   —Natalie Scenters-Zapico   Natalie Scenters-Zapico is the author of The Verging Cities (Center for Literary Publishing, 2015). She is the 2016-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.   Photo credit: José Ángel Maldonado Poetry by Scenters-Zapico   The Verging Cities (Center for Literary Publishing, 2015)  "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo "Human Habitat" by Alison Hawthorne Deming "The Future Is Here" by Bianca Stone Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038