Live Trap

by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers

1
Sex is in the brain; I’ve been training
mine for so long. Please don’t fail me now.

2
The sutures move,
pull loose and tight,
each stitch a closet
in the garment, a room
within a room.

3
Doctors make you beg
for the comfort of your own body.
They tell me my vagina has integrity
neither foreshortened
nor shallow, its walls intact.
As apparatus goes, there’s nothing
I lack. What their excises have decreed
let no woman question.

4
Ordinary motion presses
against the scar, life
a big toe stretching
and pulling the darn.
My stomach puckers,
pantyhose skin center-
seamed. By reflex, I reach
to take it off and realize
I’m already naked, belly
button to pubic bone.

5
Fifteen to thirty minutes
of visualizing—face under a pillow,
seam-side down, my partner rubbing
rubbing—and still
I catch no charge.

6
After so much probing,
mental inquiry:
If I am the sock monkey,
who’s my puppeteer?

7
When I finally orgasm, I think
I’ve escaped, and my body lifts
a finger.

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Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers is a queer, nonbinary poet, writer, book critic, and farmer. A graduate of Penn State and Old Dominion University, their creative work has been published in venues such as Gulf Stream, IthacaLit, Menacing Hedge, and Peculiar. They were a 2018-19 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow, and their critical work has appeared in Orion, LitHub, The Believer, The Rumpus, The Millions, Foreword Reviews, and others. Find them talking about books and other passions on Twitter @murderopilcrows.