maiden voyage

mythology like

there is no version of this
story where i am not iphigenia

daughtered, martyred
paling in the crescent light
dear to someone
& still culled

who ever did
what they intended
& got away with their life?
his own son’s cup
wouldn’t pass

the stories that cling
always have something
to do with the doling out
of belated salvation

i mean to say
i learned the verses & hymns
& never felt clean
i mean to say
my shame had teeth
& i was all meat on bone
i cross my t’s and pray to
them. it would take a bleeding
man to make me clean

another kindness
i am told my life has been
full of them
i count them before i sleep

waking only to cut garlic
on the wrong board
souring future fruits

write a poem into the space
between my breath & the rest
of the world

intent, the way a child is,
on making a home of this
vessel

leaving home a girl &
returning with a reddened
maw

sometimes you can hear the
bite in abide

my purity as good as cream
in the desert

i mean to say
when a body was a decision
i could make, i joined
mine to his & tore
like a perforated line

no watershed
no veil in the temple
splitting in two

just a viscous blush
on the altar of a man
i once found beautiful

–Imani Nikelle

Imani Nikelle is a southern-born, East Coast dwelling poet & filmmaker. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Callaloo, Poet Lore, Cordite Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is currently earning an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.