Poetry by Aleikza M. Diaz

     Lise CC




Body after Man’s New Consciousness Part 5

I mourn the death of that social creature I was,
a death so hot and green. A precipitous teen mortality

that touches me now, even at such an old age as twenty-one,
where I can say or do anything, but I don’t—don’t I?

When plans are being made and I fail to accept
them, when conversation doesn’t come easily

it is surely because that day is stuttering
about the room where it happened. It stands

a person of its own within the body where it lives: my body. 
Where it occupies space, taxes my bones, and stakes its claim.

Know that it is present when
my heart quickens to the pace of duckling

feet trailing close behind mama, just at the raspy noise
of violation, like the grating hoot of an old September owl.

Just at the look—the twisted, sharpened nails,
the seething face and wrinkled skin—of it.

The touch of man—oh, how it makes my skin fold, rather than crawl,
into a cube of repugnance, abhorrence, and synonyms not yet discovered. 

This thing has made me fear sweet, pink girls, fear them
because I’ve done something detestable. Something wrong.

Something wrong. But no sweet, pink girl you did not, they say.
And they cry with me now when I tell them about when I died.

The girls cry with me and share their expiries, too,
so that I’m not so alone. They bare their bony chests,

their bruised softness, their lengthened nails,
and heart-clad cheeks, so that I’m not left alone

in the place where it happened. Alone at school.
Alone everywhere, and nowhere at once.

Alone in this body, which desperately roots
for the home team but must keep honest score.





Body after Man’s New Consciousness Part 2

I can’t get clean without this dry brush that scrapes off my skin and leaves bloody strands across the most vulnerable part of my thigh. Just that feather-soft part toward the middle that touches its pair on the left to keep my strange girl—I hesitate to name her, though we’re so close—tucked within. She more governmentally “protected” than I will ever be, though not by my standards, but those some senator/justice/president made for us. They without a clue of what she truly holds—more than the sacred life of a phantom golden child or real babies or rust—but love and warmth and the slide of peaches. Not fresh ones, but those prepackaged in grocery store cups, submerged in high-fructose goo—slick with time and patience, and never robbed from the tree that bore them. 

But, oh, we know how they like to steal fruit off green branches.

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Aleikza M. Diaz (she/her) is a writer and editor from New Jersey. Her work is published or forthcoming in Bullshit Lit, Glass Mountain, and others. Find her on Substack, Instagram, and X @aleikza.