The Post-Socialist Palimpsest of Your Body by Andrea Jurjević

a flock of gulls settling down in their dirty wedding gowns

The Post-Socialist Palimpsest of Your Body

by Andrea Jurjević

your uterus rots at the hospital dump.
the keys on the dresser spread like legs.

the boots by the bed are a ghost town.
you wear this rental house, the government 

of its bones, like a good foreigner. 
not just because it's july and the south,

because all is dust and fevered crickets,
you feel sifted. love is a scratched-out ticket,

a ship the dock awaits. a flock of gulls 
settling down in their dirty wedding gowns.

a mouse shrunk into a bloated blueberry. 
as the morning, doubled-over and thirsty,

enters the kitchen—that stateless space,
light as the jackboot hollowing your throat. 

Bellevue Literary Review, 2019