My Nipples Are a Public Safety Hazard

My Nipples Are a Public Safety Hazard

Cake

In one episode of the anime Romantic Killer, a slice of strawberry cake is seen skating across the floor. The voiceover explains that because cockroaches are “unseemly,” the cockroach in the scene has been swapped with a dessert.


The cake is not to be seen, even if it isn’t 
the real thing, but a representation,

once removed. Once, an aunt told me 
to put a bra on beneath the t-shirt

I changed into after work, for my cake
showed, two dots, if I was to join

the men in the living room—my uncle, 
step-father, cousins—for primetime TV.

“Husbands and sons,” she called them. 
Cold, my cake bristles; warm, they soften,

turn slumbrous. Despite their wishy-washy 
way of appearing, they did not pass

unnoticed. The objection is not to cake, 
not to what cake represents,

but to the imprints on a piece of fabric 
from which ideas may be conjured.

Cake is delicious—like the ripe, 
plump strawberries erect on a bed

of rich cream—but denied airtime, 
until they turn into feeding 
instruments.

Narcissus

The plant blooms—its crown tugs 
its sepals. Under their weight,

the blossom droops, as if to deflect 
any advances, tucking in its ovary,

wasting its pollen on the mud. 
Likewise, the youth matures

but turns his face away—
He will not concede when pursuers

coax him, “You are too beautiful 
to remain celibate.”

Does a flower ever escape from bees 
or a hand, like mine, ready to

tilt its head up and rub the stamens? 
I get the mythmakers’ sentiment:

recalling the boy who will not 
love me back, I, too,

would cast him as a character 
that turns vegetable,

would make him lose his favor 
with the gods and make him lose it

into the water. I, too, would rather 
he fell for himself,

or better yet, died beating
his chest black and blue, alone.