by Alyx Chandler

The debate of the nipple lasts for weeks.
Drags out across the countryside. Becomes a third eye.
Get rid of it, mom says. Keep it, grandpa says.

Tattoo it into a bouquet, wildflowers galore. The first piece.

Adding artwork is easy. I let them press into my skin
like a jogged memory. Let the mountain form a mountain

as Grandma watches soap operas with us,
covers my eyes for the shirtless scenes,

cackling: nipples are sacred.

In Tennessee, mom speeds past cows with bright ear tags.
Windows rolled down and wind loud
as I drape my fingers out,

reach for slopes, rinded but glowing.
Breasts in the dark.

When she got the mastectomy,
I tried to cut my breasts with sewing scissors,
instead I made a scar like a stem,

a crooked line to tattoo.

I used to think all the women in my family
were forced to have them removed, that together
all our breasts would weigh the same as one woman.

I imagined we would bury the bras with them.
Never do laundry again.

Attached to wooden clothespins are bras
polka dot, diaphanous, silk, polyester
wings flapping like birds at me, lace linguistics.

Time is a prioritization of tissue,

a tattoo in an open-backed dress
gripping my ribcage

like hooks of a bra.

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Alyx Chandler received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she taught poetry. She is a publicist for Poetry Northwest, a poetry reader for Electric Literature, and former poetry editor for CutBank Literary Magazine. Her poetry can be found in Cordella Magazine, Glass House Press, and is forthcoming in the Greensboro Review. Currently, she lives in Missoula and serves as the 2021-22 Americorps VISTA for two Montana-based creative writing nonprofits, the Missoula Writing Collaborative and the Free Verse Writing Project.