Boxing Gloves

Six years after Time Magazine’s “The Protester”

In the shadow of a low-lying sun
is foul matter: dignity more important
than bread, milk poured into eyes much like
into a breakfast glass

waging with pepper spray, lachrymatory.
In six years, I am taller than I ever have been before;
whittled, carved down with a chainsaw into
calves, collarbones, a waist.

A faucet that leaks petroleum. A town with no tap water,
all I am is a coat hanger for men to bite their teeth into:
orthodontics in between incisors. Prepubescent retainers.
A fire set to their conjecture.

I skirmish with earthquakes and euthanasia
in the face of a blighted ovum.
The sun has never seen the night but
God, it will now,

as I barricade the sun from setting,
and stand on a deserted soapbox.
A moon’s laughter is illuminated in telescope lenses;
for the tides have drowned the incitation of dissent.

By Audrey Lee

Biography:

Audrey Lee will be attending Franklin and Marshall College this coming fall. She is the winner of the 2016 DeSales University Poetry Contest and her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and Columbia College of Chicago. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Teen Vogue, Rookie Magazine, The Ellis Review, and Paper Swans Press. Her chapbook Unknown Futures is forthcoming from Red Paint Hill Publishing in 2018.