The Nude

By Shara McCallum

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I grow weary of not using the word cunt.
Hers is the hairy mess I want, precisely that cunt.

Don’t offer me a neatly trimmed or, God forbid,
shaved, depilated, waxed, exfoliated cunt.

I disavow the ones still posing as virgins,
won’t suffer lightly those ever-prepubescent cunts.

Nor even wyfe or witch, reeking of myth, burned
for the crime of possessing her human cunt.

The one I need, the one I’m calling on now, is she
of the cuntiest-ways-of-knowing-herself cunt.

She, the alpha and omega, unshackled
by the chaos of the universe cunt.

She, the OG, motherfucking cunt come
to rain down fire on all our cuntishness.

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From Jamaica and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of seven books of poetry, published in the US & UK, including Behold (forthcoming in 2026), No Ruined Stone (winner of the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry), and Madwoman (winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize). In her youth, Miami was
her old stomping grounds. McCallum now lives in Pennsylvania and teaches at Penn State University.

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