“The year of waiting on rooves for August to end” by Anne Marie Rooney

I was the name of nothing and I moved like a god

with my tongue. I was everything to everyone

and I sat on my stoop with my hands on my crown.

I wore a little dress and little else. I was astral, no other word

for the shining plunge of me. When stars crashed, I bent my neck

to any boy’s dank mouth. I was a pigeon, I was a flat

tire. I was everything! Small storms crashed about me but I did not

mash kindly under them. When the worst cloud

came I steeled myself like a rusty timpani. I was thin—

but the sound! From then on, I was convinced of nothing

but collision. That summer, I knew only: sun; salt:

so I slept with only: sun; salt. And so my gills

were always heaving. When I tired of float and burn I lay

against the beaten cliff and let the little sand men

revere my beauty. I wore a cowel but I was not

a cowel, meaning: wherever I traveled, my home

traveled too. Not like I didn’t know the warm plank

of terra firma. Like any woman, I could bend

to good wood. This was the month’s slow

ship, hard as an apple. And my teeth, incising

where no knives should ever. For a year I filled my pockets

with this air.