Catcalling happens to other animals too
Startle blink and freeze
Saliva and metal
It doesn’t have to be a taser
You wait for things to be over with
You stay engaged
Figure out your own body chemistry
And what sets you off chemically
I remember what I wore
I wore this long flowy desert-yellow dress with sequins
I remember that I had a red scarf on my hair
I remember that creaky pleather jacket
Really I was just weighing myself down
The older I get
The more intentional I become
If you ask me if I have a sister I say no
It’s not even a level of I’m lying to you
Everybody has their arch-nemesis, right
We lie to ourselves
The thing I’m doing wrong is telling the truth
Which doesn’t seem like that big of a deal
I wouldn’t probably say it if I was your teacher
But I’m not your teacher so I can say it
There’s a poem that happens in four sections
The words are like duck duck duck duck duck duck duck
I wanted to write a poem about hands, and then I drew a hand
Laura S. Marshall is a writer and editor who lives in New England. She studied linguistics as an undergraduate at Queen’s University in Canada and as a grad student at the University of British Columbia. She has studied writing at the Ashbery Home School, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at UMass Amherst, and the College of Our Lady of the Elms. Her work appears or is forthcoming in literary publications including Epigraph Magazine, Lavender Review, Junoesq, and the Queen’s Feminist Review, as well as newspapers and trade magazines.
Art by Brooke Warren.
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