Change of Hands by Krysta Lee Frost

                        corrine klug CC



Change of Hands


To begin: the famished shapes my body
makes to circumvent

shame. When the spotlight
carves me out of shadow, I step forward. 

I am a great contortionist, a performer
by birth. Let me show you 

all the costumes I wear, my sequined
varieties of could-be fantasies

cocooning my vulnerable
narcissism: I want them all

to see me, trace my face 
beneath the gauze, show me

the eyes following my coming
-to and into the room. Like waking up

into a dream, I defer to the logic
of stares splitting me in half--

it’s painless, really, all veins
and organs beneath organza, unhinging

all the moving parts I could do without.
To split without a rasp of resistance

means they forget they’re being made
to watch; the applause comes only after

my show of hands: I wear so many
it’s hard to keep track of all my tricks.

My favorite is when I hold the wrong
tools but still try to use them

to orchestrate my undressing. See,
if I respected myself like I did another

man’s property, I wouldn’t be here fumbling
to reattach the joints. It’s not like 

I like it, being naked on stage, but without
all the lights they can’t see I’m earnest

about it, the job I do 
is simple: I’m twisting all the wires

barbed, I dig a hole and try
to claw my way back out.

​

Krysta Lee Frost is a mixed race Filipino American poet who halves her life between the Philippines and the United States. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Margins, Entropy, Berkeley Poetry Review, wildness, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

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