Poetry By Holli Flanagan

Jenavieve Marie CC



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WHEN THE DEVIL GRINS WITH THE TEETH OF A GIRL

Right after my June birthday, celebrated
with a smudged driver’s permit and my first volunteer job,
a hospital patient gets too interested 
in my candy-striper skirt and clean white sneakers.
The whole thing lasts a lifetime, 
thirty seconds or so,
before I am pulled back into the hall,
told it’s okay,

you’re okay,

until I believe it.

Back at home, I tear off the skirt,
throw it in the kitchen trash, 
and apologize to the khaki pants in my closet
for thinking the shapeless fabric and safe buttons
were too ugly to wear
before.

After the summer, a boy tells me I’m special,
tells me he bets I’m even cuter 
without so many clothes on.
I text the pictures he asks for, 
then panic, 
ask him to delete them.
He says LOL no,
and I’m not hungry for dinner.

So by the time the deacon finds me 
alone in the Sunday school room
and walks forward with his hands reaching,
reaching,

reaching 

out for more pieces of me,
I want to lace my fingers through his
and show him what it looks like
when the devil grins
with the teeth 
of a girl.

​


​
CHAPEL

For a small Southern Baptist school,
there sure were a lot of queer kids 
lining the pews.

If you were really quiet,
and listened very closely,
I bet you could have heard us

screaming.

​
​

Holli Flanagan (she/her) is a writer and editor from Eden, North Carolina, currently pursuing an English PhD at the University of Delaware. As an academic and poet, her writing explores messy feelings, girlhood, the bite of memory, and queerness. Her wife Maisie is her happiest thought.

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