ArLiJo.com is currently featuring poetry by Catee Baugh, a native of Washington, DC, and an award-winning essay by Holly Berardi from suburban Maryland.
Exhibitionist
Touch is a pleasure Making me yelp- After pushing all my caustic emotions Up to the pores of my skin and Watching them leak out, I realize now I am a burn victim And to touch me is to touch The skin of an atomic survivor.
But pain is both poison and antidote, A vaccine against the ordinary. So for you, I will expose myself And all my defenses and pretensions, Though not pretending Their removal is easy or safe. They are duct-tape band-aids Tearing away the hair And meager portions of singed skin When I yank them off To the tune of my Screaming laughter So that you might see thin ribbons Of muscle and vein under my superficial layers While I laugh at the infection seeping in.
Yes, there is something Masochistic in my sullen art. And I remember all those muttered words From the mouths of teachers about “Narrator as imagined construct in poem.” But I would rather be Slit open and displayed On iron tables in museum hallways With my very intestines hanging off, Dripping onto the feet of passerby, And they pulling off my skin like burnt offerings Than be a masked and painted actor on a stage, Only there to forget my made-up lines.
Copyright © 2010 by Catee Baugh.
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To read Holly Berardi\’s essay A Deeper Look into Negative Campaigning, click on the link below:
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