Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
I’m sick to death of all these stupid meetings
but never tire of playing peek-a-boo.
These lurching fiends fall for it every time.
They yammer on and on about their “problems.”
My disconnected fragmentary life!
Then I appear, dressed to kill, picking my nose,
provoking whispered how unladylikes
but I’m just your standard disappearing woman.
We have historic roots—a formula
as old as Frankenstein. What can they say
about my tattoo brows, this Botox forehead,
these blinding fangs and scary scaffold breasts,
my truly madly deeply orange tan?
I am no bubbling beaker, but Incarnation:
Fashion fills and grafts and animates me,
a breathing figurine with bee-stung lips.
Buried alive! A willing tomb for some.
Even my eyelash implants say improved.
To hell with that—I’ve better things to do—
and here’s the moment Monster reappears…
***
Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is a longtime editor, slowly publishing poet, and author of six picture books, including From Apple Trees to Cider, Please! and The Boy Who Said Nonsense (Albert Whitman & Company). In 2018 she moved away from the masthead of an academic quarterly to work with those who want to share their ideas, stories, and poems in print.