Hot in the Striped Boy's Heart

Abstract

Jan Beatty’s fifth book, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), won the 2018 Paterson Prize. The Huffington Post called her one of ten “advanced women poets for required reading.” She worked as an abortion counselor, in maximum-security prisons, and directs the creative writing program at Carlow University. July 10, 1040: Lady Godiva, wife of the Earl of Mercia, rides naked on horseback to force her husband to lower taxes. July 10, 2015: Sandra Bland was pulled over by a state trooper for an alleged traffic violation. I could ride bare-breasted bareback (if my hair were long) trail through a city (if I could convince my husband, if he might contemplate my modesty) to lower injustices (if he were to look) my fuzzy mound to decide be fair (if I could) to the people fair as the under of hand ride (if I were on a horse) several centuries (if I may part my river of hair to show the man he might stare at my hilly breasts, if he) think himself an emperor, I a lady, might he not lower woman like tax (might) bones not beat ground like hooves (if my new clothes were no clothes) (if I stripped and mounted, nude, if only to change) my lesser-ribbed counterpart (if I have to) I undress for him, for every life (if I want) to save (if that includes my own) (if I weren’t afraid to) say either of our names (if the officer could have seen her and her mother, too) if my body brought better, (if) it means something Lady Godiva traversed the city bare (if many wars ago) hitched hips to horse (as if a lover) the same day Sandra Bland was arrested (might if a woman ride a thing she not be driven beneath it?) Ashanti Anderson is a poet and screenwriter. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. You can read more of her work in Poetry, Crab Fat Magazine, and Foothill. She currently lives in Texas. If by Ashanti Anderson Hot in the Striped Boy’s Heart by Jan Beatty It’s hot in the loading bridge, hot in the birth canal, it’s hot in the striped boy’s heart – we’re two women driving to D.C. for an abortion in my beater sea-green Le Mans with the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll sticker on the bumper. It’s hot living in my car with the mattress in the back, the windshield wipers disintegrating and so it’s raining all the way to D.C. and my friend is terrified, let it go too long with a guy she loves but he couldn’t care and she can’t face her parents. Borrowed money from the waitresses we worked with, saline solution for a second-trimester abortion, it’s hot in the Silverman’s T-shirt I’m still wearing from sixth grade with gold and blue stripes, hot in the men’s store buying my first real shirt with my girlfriend Patty. I was a boy then, not yet a woman following the sightlines from the silver hood ornament to the double yellow. Hot in the Pontiac trunk of clothes and boxes and the cheap hotel in Silver Springs for the early morning procedure, two women in their twenties out of state for treatment, hot in this traveling altar, these bodies run amok. Body of light, body of doubles. Body of never telling anyone, never seeing her again. Hot in the striped boy’s heart in this car dragging home with no talk, still bleeding. WORLDLIT.ORG 87 ...