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Aubade with Strap-On
by Meghann Plunkett 

                        Not the morning
light     that makes me        whole,
 
the three of us
                        in your twin bed
                       
Still, at the root of me,
            I feel it
a phantom
            forgetting
                        what isn’t mine
 
 Still the same girl,              yes,
 
but for the first time, 
            all        my empty gone
fake, escape
            false flesh
feral
            throbless
                        tethered
 
Last night I saw your back     arch,
            your face hidden
                        in the long Sunday
                                    of your hair
I became something else                   
            something that understood
how to bare my teeth and like a man
            drive forgiveness from you
                        where there is nothing
to forgive                               
I understood how
                        to bend you double,
the aluminum taste
            of control       
thick in my lung–        sweet girl,
 
                        what does it mean–
 
to be me anymore?     I was a single
 
match flint,      I was the music
            of wolves,
I was the same
                        as you
 
            Now, I watch your breathing
and wonder who else has spent
                        a dark morning
holding your hips to their own,
 
            a robin at the window
but I want you all
                        to myself,
 
hate everything that could make you
            quill, there is a new want
born in me
            and I have forgotten
myself,                       
            obsessing
                        in the mineminemine
of being more man
                   than I was before 

​ 
Meghann Plunkett is a poet, coder, and lover of dogs. She was a finalist for the 2017 North American Review’s Hearst Poetry Prize as well as the 2016 Narrative Magazine's 30 Below Contest. Meghann is currently an MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets College Prize. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, the North American Review, The Paris-American, Muzzle Magazine, Winter Tangerine, decomP Magazine, storySouth, and the anthology Chorus (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Her essays, erasures and animated poems can be found in Luna Luna Magazine. She is the writer in residence at Omega Institution and the director of The Black Dog Tall Ship Writing Retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, MA. (visit her at meghannplunkett.com) 
June 2017
ISSN 2157-8079
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