evalyn lee

No One Came to See Our Ice Experiment

The city sky rides in a bowl of water
on the roof of the Heavenly Rest Church.

Jungle-gymmed, trapped into learning
the unspoken grammar of bodies, 

from a boy’s mouth the tooth drops out alone,
a crocus head cut white, curved, lonely, 

a thin thread of blood like the water
in the bowl thickens, grows a city, skin 

iced. The freezing wind licks the life be-
tween my legs, blue underpants grounded 

by the grate beside the bowl of icing
water. You do not get to touch me. 

The school calls my dad. I hear him say:
she must have had a reason. Ask.