She Walks Into The Party Naked

No one finishes the joke.
It is left to hang like a tooth pulled
too early. The tendon still reaches
for its root. The root still asks where
home is.

In this way, we are left to swell
like a balloon under water, like
something that is pressure from every direction, like
trying not to look up too suddenly
for fear of
bursting. I speak like this,
an unfinished joke.
I speak like this, its intended punch-line.

Here is my punch line:
I am woven shut.
It is not quiet to show you how
I stop from becoming the bone
of what was done to me.

“She walks into the party naked,”
and she is burned alive,
and she is laid out for the party goers to eat,
and she is only meat
and boys are taught to clean the bones
or they have not eaten the animal
like a man.

“She walks into the party naked”
and we bury the punch line
inside the ready flesh of our
skinned throats.
We bury me.
We bury us,
under promises of becoming the shell
that homes the ideal mouth,

the one that can laugh, empty,
at her own gutting.

By Emma Bleker

Biography:

Emma Bleker is a 21 year old writer currently working for her English degree in Virginia. She has previously been published, or is forthcoming in Electric Cereal, Persephone’s Daughters, Skylark Review, Rising Phoenix Press, and Cahoodaloodaling, among others. She probably wants to be your friend.