Girl Sonnet

I watch girlhood grow older in grocery store aisles.
She buys fruit, at first, and later meat. In the gas station,
pumped full of gender and leaking an age-appropriate
intestinal fluid, she chats with the attendant. In the
fitting room she tries on denim pants that refuse her, jests
apologetic with the clerk who rearranges gas-
trotracts for a living. In the garage her oil’s changed
and tank refilled, she flirts with the feeling of being seen.
Grapefruit, jar of pickles, six kinds of mustard, cheerios,
chuck roast, pork chop, tenderloin. Belly button crop top,
hydraulic fracking. On public transportation she takes
risks, whistles and loots, makes out scot-free because she paid in
full. Awkward sock stuff. She milkshakes at the mall in awe of
the attention. She orders at the butcher like she knows
one knife from another. I order one more martini,
filthy, gin. Backlit and relaxed, I bloodsoak, brimstone, grin.

Eleanore Tisch is a poet and educator, born and raised in Chicago. She has a BA in Writing & Literature from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and an MA in Education Foundations, Policy, and Practice from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently working towards an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, where she is exploring the neurologic and philosophical relationships between language, the brain, and the body.