Stephanie Lane Sutton
Vaginal Eulogy
My sex is a ghost & in my dreams, we fuck like two wet cloths. My sex ghost wears navy over its invisible; it rejects transparency. My sex ghost grows new legs & walks like a crab. I meet my sex ghost in a tide pool, its spindly legs piercing sand over & over again. In this way, it curses the moon. I apply & reapply lipstick as I think about this. I try to remember my sex’s warm hand & cannot. When I come to, I am in over my head in ocean water. My sex ghost is swimming; I know because I can see the interruption of waves around its dance.
Vaginal Effigy
The bounty hunters came but by that time my sex had long since been evicted. That’s irony, I told them, thinking about all the rent I could buy had I let my sex stay. I think the bounty hunters misheard me. One of their eyes darted to a heap of clean wrinkled clothes in a hump on my bed. I thought that was ironing, one of the bounty hunters said. The other bounty hunter was flicking his tusks with his index finger; it made a hollow metallic ding. At night, the image of the tusks came to me, their pearly glint so vivid it was practically reflecting the moon. The thought of the tusk plunging into me did arise; however, because of my sex’s eviction, I had no space left inside of me. Then I carried the clean laundry into the very center of the yard, dousing it in gasoline like salad dressing & lit a match. The whole heap went up. What would my sex say if it could see me now? I wondered. I looked to the moon. The moon looked back at me. I heard my own voice say aloud, I’m coming. I’ll be home soon.
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Stephanie Lane Sutton was born in Detroit. Her poetry has recently appeared in Rhino, Dialogist, Glass Poetry Journal, Anomaly, and The Offing. Her prose has been published in The Adroit Journal and Black Warrior Review. Her micro-chapbook, Shiny Insect Sex, is part of the Bull City Press Inch Series. She has a creative writing MFA from the University of Miami, where she was the managing editor of Sinking City. Youcan find her on Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter as @AthenaSleepsIn.
