all the way down

Marty McConnell

she starts with the hand that took
the letter that said I love you.
regrets the fingers, nails clipped
to the nub. the palm, loveline jagged,
intersected every millimeter, mad highway
crossed and re-crossed. all the way
to the wrist / bites down / swallows whole
with a full glass of water, thumb catching

on the stomach lid / good she thinks
and starts in on the eyes that blinked at the word
love that shut to words crush
to tenuous to breach / regrets the lashes lying
impossibly small anti-moons
on that pillow, regrets the shedding and chews

the lips. lips that said rules that said bad
idea turned coward to lust and said
yes. yes to the woman she knew
she'd wound and did and now handless
eyeless can't answer the guilty phone can't fix
the betraying / the blasphemous lips
bleed like licorice all the way down

Marty McConnell transplanted herself from Chicago to New York City in 1999, after completing three national tours with the Morrigan, an all-female performance poetry troupe she co-founded. She received her MFA in creative writing/poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and went on to compete in the 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003 National Poetry Slams with the NYC/Union Square team. She is a member of the louderARTS Project, which runs two reading series, ongoing workshops and collaborative performances in NYC. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies, including Will Work for Peace and In Our Own Words: Poetry of Generation X, as well as literary magazines including Fourteen Hills, Prairie Schooner, and Blue Fifth Review.

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