The Naked Storm, by Laurel Benjamin

The Naked Storm 
after Angel No. 4, by Cui Xiuwem (China) 2006

She has to reproduce copies of herself
because her baby won’t come

full term, turning point in a naked storm
where retreat and thunder are the same.

Her iterations are calm,
every tile, every eyelash,

and none of her selves pierced by the roof
splitting up, sea rise above the bridge. 

Many ways to wear white, she says,
stomach punched.

The government doesn’t allow
processions, short skirts.

What will you do with us all,
no shoes, all the same,

short-banged hair, red eyes
from long nights with a tall musician

and it’s only September
a broken gate piercing with the wind 

how I, like a monster,
just on the outside.

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin has poetry forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review, Black Fox, Limit Experience, Word Poppy Press. Find her work in Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women's Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, The Ekphrastic Review (challenge  finalist), California Quarterly, Midway Journal, MacQueens Quinterly, Wild Roof Journal, Tiny Seed, and more. She is an Oregon Poetry Association honourable mention, and is a Sunspot long lister. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Twitter handle: @lbencleo More at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com