Poem that Listens to Griselda & Remains Stoic Until It Receives Word of Illness & Can Do Nothing but Prostrate in a Cage Made by Man by Justin Rovillos Monson

No, the body is no metaphor. It is a caged animal.

Poem that Listens to Griselda & Remains Stoic Until It Receives Word of Illness & Can Do Nothing but Prostrate in a Cage Made

by Justin Rovillos Monson¹

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Who was it that foolishly believed these days would not be normal? As if Jake Tapper could conjure a correctional facility that lurks & mirrors the living world. As if the gangs would cease to twist fingers & track the contraband in hand-to-hand exchanges. Your name is your number is your name is your number is your –

The body that birthed you
That God-vessel that wove
A knot of knees and breath

This body is now under
Eight blankets. This body
Aches. An unknown body

Has barged through one
Of the many doors left
Open by this body & now

Sieges this body as each nation
Begins to accept the body
As a body in need of pretty cages

Body in need of containment, in need
Of distance, in need of new
Dialect & the many abstractions

That roam the body & the empty
Streets when the body finds itself
Left alone with no other body

To hold it. Rough translation:
Your body is in a cage but not
This poem or its institutionalized

Poetics. No, the body is no metaphor.
It is a caged animal. The body of bloom
& breakfast, body of birth & bought-Forces

Now houses an unknown ailment
Only weeks after a West Coast
Journey. This body once held you.

This body will one day be held
By the soil or the sky or the body
Of water once crossed. This body
Will fade into the world you once
Vandalized, as will your body
& the others. But, please, body, more time

1. First published in Waxwing, Issue 33, 2025.