Perilous Figures
Jessica Manack
Girls are finally reclaiming mathematics,
let us rejoice, doing columns of sums
for fun, tallying, multiplying, leaving boys
in the dust, calorie counters of the world unite!
Girls are doing it right now, those smoking motors,
showing us how to run on spit and fire, on zeroes,
showing us what sort of empires the silent form.
Auto-makers, engineers, take heed:
these geniuses of consumption show us
how to go-go-go on nothing at all, how to maximize
miles per gallon, minimizing everything else.
At once girls are saints and hurricanes:
performing miracles, feeding two thousand
with one loaf, turning disgust to combustion,
moving steadily, messes of blurry lines and aerobic activity.
Deeming their silhouettes happy accidents,
not carefully crafted works of art and violence,
girls brandish their bodies at the world
as though there is nothing obscene
in having swords for collarbones,
as though there is nothing hostile
in sharpening the knives of their ribs.
Girls cannot exist outside of facade,
claiming that they already ate, that they're
late, that they're too busy to eat, too full
already of appointments and spite.
Girls lie to the world that lies to them first,
whispering: here is an allotment to do with
as you wish, belonging only to you,
no one wrangling it from your hands,
appraising it with lust you don't understand,
sullying it without your consent.
Girls relish the last laugh, they know what goes,
what's chaff; they know what they're doing,
how near sunlight can get to bone.
Girls know how to pare. Girls know when to stop,
how to find the statue hidden under all that stone.