Twenty-six Words for “Vulva”:
R is for Ravine
Point me to the narrows where the rush the rage the rip and rapid
rape and riven hollow runs how all you know of water is violence.
The river violet gerardia open-mouthed and asking while you lay
in your inner tube all wort and warning and vascular letting
the slow current channel you, your canal like tunnel vision
the way you depicted me in legs-spread reds so close and closing in.
This is my cataract, my counteract to your resurgence,
baby, you deserve him even though you engorged me
and swore up and drown you were never coming back out.
Billie R. Tadros is the author of a book of poems, The Tree We Planted and Buried You In (Otis Books, 2018) and two chapbooks of poems, inter: burial places (Porkbelly Press, 2016) and Containers (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in The Boiler, Bone Bouquet, The Collapsar, Crab Fat Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, Gigantic Sequins, Horse Less Review, Kindred, Menacing Hedge, r.kv.r.y., Tupelo Quarterly, Wicked Alice, Word Riot, and others, and in the anthologies Bearers of Distance (Eastern Point Press, 2013), Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013), and The Queer South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). She lives with her wife in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she will be teaching at the University of Scranton beginning fall 2018. Twitter @BillieRTadros