Christa and I play body
bingo it’s a game not a fun
one we trace our outlines
our bodies like crime scenes
and shade in everywhere we’re
broken we’re broken everywhere
she colors lungs kidneys feet
she’s just beginning I color
spine stomach brain our drawings
get darker they don’t look holy
they look mangled five broken
parts and bingo we’re both
winning we’re both lost no
temples but landfills circuses
with horrible acts circuses
that should be illegal we shut
our eyes erase our drawings
we don’t need them to know
where we feel we write
a medical dictionary the only
way to remember everything
Christa helps me pronounce
the tricky words there are a lot
of tricky words we don’t have
time to define them all but next
to each we write you’re so
strong we look at our bodies
we hold each other we hold
ourselves what is a body
a field for exploring pain
Katie McMorris is a writer and dancer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She received her MFA from Purdue University, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize, and is currently a PhD student at Oklahoma State University. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Rupture, Booth, and Passages North, among others.