Poetry By Christina Hennemann

       Tim Sackton CC




The Deadlift 

• 4 sets of 8 reps, 10kg:

The first time I deadlifted— that was me. My broken bones, the child crying on the floor. I lifted myself up on top of a mountain where no one could see me. Wrapped into my self, the shroud, I turned into a blank space. He didn’t find me often then. 

• 4 sets of 8 reps, 20kg: 

The next time I deadlifted, twenty years later, I picked up a lifeless thing. I felt armless against the Olympic barbell, the solid iron. It was heavier than carrying myself through growing tall, my hands hanging limp from their joints, and yet, the dead load became my invigorator. I pulled through despite longing to shrink beneath the slits in the floor mats. 

• 4 sets of 8 reps, 50kg: 

A year into deadlifting, my muscles began to bulge. I picked up the iron barbell, week after week, loaded with weight plates. I pulled my body weight up to my hips, the weight of myself hanging at my womb, and I was reborn like I always did after my deaths. And I could suddenly be seen on top of my mountain. 

• 4 sets of 8 reps, 55kg: 

Women shouldn’t be musclier than men, said the jelly-armed boyfriend and shut his eyes. You’re a beast, said the fuckboy and ran his tongue over my thighs. They’d take me squatting on the floor, pressed against the wall on my tippy toes. Not a drop of love escaped their muscled-up manhood. Witch, they said: fuckable woman. Strong woman. Scary woman.

• 1 rep max, 68kg: 

Don’t sweat it, girl, I tell myself, you can carry more than yourself. My legs are pillars on the mat, up above I fly my shroud as a flag of survival. If he found me now, I would lift him up and shoot him into the sky. I’m tougher than the rest. One day I’ll find someone who rubs my bulging bicep with honey and whispers: I’m rough and ready for love.





Body Wave 

Who have I become, 
under this new moon
I shed my pronouns. 

Don’t call me by my name, 
I go by auxiliary verbs 
(can/could). 

Can I shatter the pillars on the pier?
Could I batter my bones into shooting stars? 

Sleep is fragile as breath is fragile,
I toss and tar under the sheets, 
but I know how to blanch on water. 

Can I swim to the moon at the horizon?
Could I split sand as a drop of ocean? 

Make a wish as to who I am now, 
the whaling wave against the temple--

a streamlined body at last. 


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Christina Hennemann is the author of the poetry pamphlet “Illuminations at Nightfall” (Sunday Mornings at the River, 2022). She won the Luain Press Poetry Competition and was shortlisted in the Anthology Poetry Award and the Onyx Fall Contest. Her work is published in The Moth, fifth wheel, National Poetry Month Canada, Brigids Gate Press, Tír na nÒg and elsewhere. She is based in Ireland and currently working on a full-length poetry collection. www.christinahennemann.com