Life Before

By Dion O'Reilly

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
—Anne Sexton


When I flew past, giants
turned to watch me,
air transformed my skin
to the shape of wind—
my feet were nob-less,
my chin, cameo ivory,
no score from lip to nostril,
no rumples on the flat
sheet of my cheek.
Hips and femurs, dense
as a bison’s, took me down
to the warm silt
of Canyon de Chelly,
tramped twenty miles up
wildflower trails at Wishon.
My brain tore shapes
from the walls of cliffs—
glyphed deer from the Holocene
the rust-blown shapes of hands.
Oh, my body sweltered,
with every kind of female heat.
Night seeped into morning—
disco balls, ten-speed careening
through traffic, catcalls as common
as chanticleers on the Ponderosa.
Once I had hair,
Medusa-wild, butt-length.
I thought its feathery glaze
would save me.  

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Dion O'Reilly’s collection, Ghost Dogs, was shortlisted for The Catamaran Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her second book, Sadness of the Apex Predator, will be published by Cornerstone Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. She facilitates workshops and hosts a podcast at The Hive Poetry Collective. Recently, her poem "The Value of Tears" was chosen by Denise Duhamel as winner of the Glitter Bomb Award.

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