Between a Rock and a Hard Place

juliette givhan

 

I don’t know if one is more Scylla

than Charybdis,

but my sisters are fighting

& this time it’s serious.

 

My body

                the boat

ballast heavy & sun browned,

struggles to sail straight—

carve a path dead center,

avoid their fallout.

 

My body

                the boat

sucked down—

funneled to ocean floor to break,

flood, rend apart, gasp back up,

dashed to the shore

in pieces

.

 

My body

                in remnants,

dragged up the rock —

scraped, devoured,

shredded against the bones

of gulls & a history

 

words that only bridge the strait between them

by carving first into me.

 

***

 

Juliette Givhan is a Black poet who writes about myths and memes. Her work appears in ANMLY Magazine, Change Seven Magazine, Two Hawks Quarterly, with forthcoming poems in Pidgeonholes Magazine and baest Journal.