Jill Khoury

Losses Trouble the Field

*Source text for this erasure: Jose, Randall T., Ed. Understanding Low Vision. American Foundation for the Blind, 1983, p. 18.

divider

 

Sixteen

he says you’re mine / he says i can do anything i want he says
demons command it / i have scrawny arms and legs

and a slut’s ass / i hide behind my hair / i believe in omens
and my own ability to shatter and reform / he closes a book

of magick with a knife in the center to guard it / he says i am
made for endurance / i believe in charms and conjuration

he’s built solidly, gives me camouflage / i’ve always wanted
to be kissed / it makes me forget i am a beautiful sacrifice

///// each time i come home i’m worried my mother
will smell him / i’m close-mouthed at the table like

i have an awesome secret / her hawk hand throws down
the dinner plates / after, we retreat to separate fields

 


Jill Khoury is interested in the intersection of poetry, visual art, gender, and disability. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and edits Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art. She has written two chapbooks: Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House, 2009) and Chance Operations (Paper Nautilus, 2016). Her debut full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, was released in 2016 from Sundress Publications. Find her at jillkhoury.com