Stripes Sonnet

By Jen Schalliol Huang

Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!

With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.

In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.

Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!

Appearances deceive. You’d like to think
I sprouted, fresh with dew, unfurled, grew
toward the sun to pink my baby cheeks. 
As if I was a thing of grace. As if 
I didn’t bite. As if I’d never striped 
malnutrition into my enamel
and raised the gumline sharpening my maw. 
I teethed on paper ‘til I started fires
in my own dry-boned mouth and then exhaled
flames just like a dragon. Like a myth. But
real. Touch me. I’m not scaled, nor a  
figment. I have loved myself to softness, 
cauterized and kissed closed every wound 
with my own tiger’s tongue. In forgiveness.
Invoking blessings. I am plush with them.

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Jen Schalliol Huang is a disabled poet living pondside in Massachusetts. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her chapbook, Means of Access, was printed through the Kenyon Review. She reads for [PANK] and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her work has been featured in Cincinnati Review, Flock, RHINO, The Shore, Sou’wester, Shenandoah, and others. Twitter: @jenschalliol.

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