Free Me

Carmen Gimenez Smith

My belly triggers memories of the living and the dead. My belly is good as an armrest for texting. I like my belly because all female bodies are intoxicating terrains. My belly: a waterbed for your baby head. My daughter pushes into my belly button with her finger because that’s where we are connected. My belly’s post-capitalist gurgles. I stroke it at night. I made this, I whisper, with all my gusto. My belly sets rooms on fire, rhetorically. I like my belly because it is my belly, not quite new a thing. I said kiss that belly because that belly will change your life. I inhabit the forest of my belly like an endangered and spotted owl. I hop into a stream, never the same one. I build a fire from the aphorisms from the cherry tree that grows from the loam of it. A belly never stops being beautiful. My belly stopped being prey in the tens. Alleuia, belly. I love my belly because the insides are scarred up from living fast. The scars in my belly are workdays and blowing winds and figurative cannibalism. So luxe, my belly. I can think of about five non-related people I would let lick my belly all over. My belly is not political resistance—Alas. This belly of one-woman acts, olive undulations of grain. If I could write poems using all of my muscles, my belly would be a different story. The fluidity of my belly’s size is an assertion of my absolute powers. My belly says you should have used moisturizer on your neck all those years. It’s a little foxy brown belly. A belly, one might say, for the ages.