Birthday
- May 18, 2022
- 1 min read
by Victoria Nordlund
After Dorothea Tanning
Accept it: We all let someone else christen us. I am here. I have arrived. Don’t be fooled — I am not the coiffed bad-ass staring you down with one hand on a knob of a door that leads to another & another & another — Promising all the answers if you follow. I admit, the resemblance is uncanny but trust me, I would never be caught dead half-dressed in a purple brocade jacket: A Jacobian garbed perky-breasted version of what you think I should look like. I painted her bare toes to tip against the tilt of a distressed floor — The moment before her escape past door number 1 & 2 & 3 &4 &
[Did you consider I may choose to close them?]
Perhaps you will discover me down this interminable corridor.
Notice the winged creature you cannot name: A broken & timid pupa that Forgets it can fly. Forgets it doesn’t exist. Maybe that was me or her —
Look closer: Acknowledge these hanging tendrils on her garment: Maybe I am one of the bodies sprouting & writhing from the drapes of the cobalt sheets — Grappling for air, dilating into infinity, laboring to be reborn.
Victoria Nordlund is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut. Her poetry collection Homer Saw a Wine-Dark Sea was published by Main Street Rag in September 2020. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in PANK Magazine, Rust+Moth, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com
