You’re already laughing at me. As if

I did something wrong by giving more

sound to space like fingers unhooking

 

the bra of a ghost. Who decides

what’s appropriate? Clean. Serious?

I am your fear buildup, the child

 

with the rainbow pinwheel

in his fist, arm outstretching window mid-

hurricane season.

 

Is it because you’re afraid to listen

loudly, to trust my noise

has good intentions? You rarely

 

say my name, would rather die

than whisper me at the dinner table

in front of your dad. So I’m planning my next

 

send off. With the astronaut who tucks

me in her silver flyaway pants to stay

warm without light. But I’ll always be your dream

 

girl, the spoon knocking the windchime,

denying porch silence. You heard me

in the womb but stiffened up, didn’t dare

 

open this tomb. Smell it.

These airy graves you carry need

surrendering. Here is embarrassment.

 

Here is its safety. Release me

like that finicky sheer thread

on your nylons. Rip me

 

unapologetically into a snowflake

you paper our walls with

in August
 

 

 

---

 

AMANDA DETTMANN is a queer poet, performer, and arts educator who is the author of Untranslatable Honeyed Bruises. She earned her MFA in poetry from New York University where she taught undergraduates and has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Dettmann was one of two finalists for the 2022 Action, Spectacle contest judged by Mary Jo Bang, as well as the winner of the 2023 Peseroff Prize in Poetry selected by Jake Skeets. Her poems have been nominated for 2025 Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, appearing in publications such as The Adroit Journal, Fence, Verse Daily, The Oakland Review, Portland Review and Stanford’s poetry journal Mantis, among others.

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is “bocca della verita” by GRETA KOSHENINA.