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Post Canvas #14 by David Goodrum

Anatomy of Girlhood by Corina Yi

Because a girl is partial until her
limbs are sewn on and her tongue

               is clipped to pacify her tenants, I find myself
               occupying queer spaces: between the veins

of a monarch’s wings and slabs of whale blubber:
to loot my body without fracturing it. See how

               the countenance of maturing is also
               a body—yielding, unnerving when

seized. I weigh glimpses of motherhood
like spoiled turnips, turn dreamless

               in the kitchen when I lip vacant
               apologies to Mother. She cups my face

like a recipe, doughs my cheeks
and measures my naked lashes

               in teaspoon intervals. She studies
               the shadowed angles of my face, counts

calendar days since I last wore buttons
on my sundresses and spooled magenta

               ribbons in my once-virgin hair. Clasping her
               hands together at the dinner table, she wishes

for feminine youth to revisit me. But when
a girl steals from herself, the adults pay no

               attention, so she steals and steals and
               steals until: I bathe like Mother, soak

fluorescence from my threaded fingertips; not
to rebel but to retreat in the absence of a light-

               like compass, slaughter guilt and make
               of it size two footprints that take me

someplace else.

Corina Yi (she/her) is a student writer who lives in Oahu, Hawai’i. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and appears in Maudlin House, Eunoia Review, SOFTBLOW, and more. You can find her on her Twitter account she used to upload her Animal Crossing content to, @rainytulips. She likes her dog a lot.

David Goodrum (Corvallis, Oregon) has had photography published in various art/literature journals and juried into many art festivals. He hopes to create a visual field that transports you away from daily events and into a place that delights in an intimate view of the world. See additional work at www.davidgoodrum.com.
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