Benny Facetimes Me From Titlow Beach While She Smokes a Fat Joint

& I hesitate to receive                 the past week I’m more of myself               than ever 
I stare                at my reflection for eleven.          uninterrupted minutes & decide 
             this place, my childhood home                became a different person 

a cul-de-sac       a radiator squeal            or a more concrete other—           it reached refiguration
before my return!                        I don’t like to be predated.                        I want the seven-year cell-cycle
shortened to seconds—don’t you?

I want a universal rebranding                   every breath a creator & destroyer. I tell Benny 
I’m expanding                 & it’s neither good nor bad but in retrospect              I may have said nothing. 
I retreat to the mirror, press myself into the pane will my flesh

to ectoplasm                  reclaim athleticism for a new age where  my viscera’s self-sufficient &
to eat is obsolete                                      where I see my body                  as lithe & sprung, like 
a Sharapova             or a Kournikova                   but here & now I’m no    jasmine-footed deity

I’m a bloodhound           groomed to bury I’m a 3-am resolution of sound   & sound-off!
a tennis court appears below my bedroom window                                   Benny says she can see it, too.
Benny says You dig a hole in the ground.  You bury the bones        not yourself

Rachel Stempel is a queer poet and MFA candidate at Adelphi University, where she also teaches. Her work can be found in the March 2020 issue of Kissing Dynamite Poetry and forthcoming in The Nasiona.