The Show Disney Desperately Wants Me to Forget

D is knocking at my bedroom door again, begging me to scratch

his belly the way his Mommy does. His room across from my room

across the house from Mama’s. The forbidden pad of a younger sister’s

feet . There’s a treehouse in my head. Fingernails, a puppet ballrooming

freshly testosteroned hair, pimple, skin. Both of us nearly,

a man, almost no longer a girl. The television swallowed up

through the windows of an interior castle. Tonight It’s That’s So Raven,

It’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Tonight, it’s Life with Derek.

Derek always reminding Casey of the step leading up to their siblinghood.

My step lies on his back behind me, eyes glued to the cellphone] , his horn

rising. A big brother always looking

out for me.

Jazmin Witherspoon's poetry has been featured in Pigeon Parade Quarterly, Cacti Fur & the Monarch Review. She is the 2023 winner of the University of Kentucky’s KLP Broadside Poetry Contest. Jazmin is an MFA candidate (class of ‘24) and a 2022 & 2023 Nikky Finney Fellow at the University of Kentucky.