Poetry By Lucy Rattner

Aurélien Adoue CC




Tercets
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Screaming in some guy’s attic, not old enough to be drunk, just young
enough to be high on the sob-story of your friends breaking up
when you’re sixteen and love seems impossible.

Everyone here is looking at you. There’s two other girls in the room,
and you’re the only one who knows how to touch yourself. Everyone
can tell. You would split open on a lightning rod if you could climb

High enough. Someone is taking a video of you. You are crazy, love.
Scruffy nobodies who would grow up to fuck your friends
play the piano. You made a painting for your best guy friend

And you weren’t brave enough to give it to him. But now you are something.
That counts, doesn’t it? Letting every impulse win, laughing like you aren’t
about to let your own world end, push of a button, detonate that shit,

It will take centuries to rebuild, baby. For now, you are screaming
in some guy’s attic, unaware of the snow falling on his rooftop.
Climb up there. Take those pants off. That’s prayer.






The Yoga Class That I Keep Booking and Cancelling

Taught    by a woman who is a small thing and can
    bend herself in ways    that challenge my 
perception of myself      Which is fine
      because I can do the splits but I don’t
              tell guys that because their minds wander
Being flexible was never about sexual viability
   for me     It was simply a way to control one
part of me   One
   small part of me

If I go to yoga    When I go to yoga   The room will
   be red and sticky with sweat because they roast
us like poultry    Like when my friends and I go
           Out   And we rub bronzing oil on our sweet chests     It’s oil or sweat or cum or whatever

We are more beautiful              under the red dive bar glow    bent over
               playing pool      thong peeking out         Their minds wander

When I do yoga at home   no one cares if I tap out
     In Revolved Chair    or weep in Savasana

When I go to yoga they will touch me    If my      
       shoulders   are not square with my hips
          I don’t want to be touched   Anymore

Do you know how hard it is to be   Touched  
     today   when the world is waiting for the right moment to end   when the reason you are doing
​yoga is to forget you were ever   Touched
     in the first place

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Lucy Rattner is a 22-year-old poet from right outside of New York City. Her work has been published in Vagabond City Lit, Pinky Thinker Press, and upcoming in North Dakota Quarterly. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem "Girlhood" published by Viewless Wings. She publishes essays on her Substack, Girls Gone Feral, as well. She adores the sublime, the surreal, and the sentimental.