Current Affairs

It doesn’t matter what
you are wearing, whether headgear
squarely in the left-right crosshairs
or a slit across your throat

You could strip
the blush blood leaves from Eve’s
Fall trees, skirt the subject
from head to henna red toe

Pull the wool, thick as a load
shedding night over eyes and mouth
and arm your legs with leather
fast and furious too

And still the tentacles
would find you, bump
and grind right behind you
octopi to occupy

Each crack and crevice
so tiresome to be
female-as-fortress
what would you give to float

Possess an infinite moat, a mote that blinds
aggression of the regressive stripe
this is your dream as you swim
hooked in a sea of fishing eyes

That the voltage of women’s verse will rise
versus a weaponized gaze, unfazed
by curses or cursor, a current to shock
unlock the dark chokehold

Until #MeToo sings the body electric.

*Poems excerpted with permission from Indelible In the Hippocampus is the Laughter; one of 5 movements in Zero
Period, Sophia Naz’s latest poetry manuscript