World introduces herself (el problema con nosotras)

after Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski

thighs slick
with illusion
I birth              this bestiary

in it:

all my women
are gorgeous                fat
fábula
made flesh

Gloria
be their hips
this acreage expansive

expanding
with ghosts     other
round delicacies

my chest is a bruised
masterpiece
in geography —

bodies laid in perfect
filaments of Earth        none
to prey for
nor pray
upon

just oration / or / oración
crafting gold

our thigh-high
(female, traditional)
moon

history will not
reject this
love-making

only the fathers

(categorized: daughters)
who demand
(mandar)

take me &
take of me

for angels
their thousand-eyed
nipples
                        dripping their sweet

milk
upon my chest

do not deliver
(mandar) me
today

Noel Yu-Jen earned her B.A. at Princeton University, where she was awarded the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in diode poetry, The Best Teen Writing of 2016, and The Cadaverine, and she has attended workshops with The Adroit Journal, Winter Tangerine Review, and the Speakeasy Project. She is a June Poet and attended the 2022 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of One Minute Press, a pan-Asian & Asian diasporic literary organization with a focus on small handheld zine series.