If the Body is a Metaphor Arien Reed (bio) "Not all women menstruate and not all people who menstruate are women." –Emmy Coletti If the body is a metaphorI fear mine has been mistranslated,conjugated by a mouth that grew up chewinga different syntax. Maybe it was supposed to be a superlativefor this is how to adore something less fleeting. Ormaybe it was supposed to be an imperative bruised out through the hole of my mother'sscreaming. Or maybe I was supposed to be passed onfrom one mouth to another evolving with each rumorthat sustains me. I want someone to give me a kissI can hold on to for later when I need one,for when my body grows [End Page 171] conjunctivebetween the female and male phrases, belonging to both, and neither, at once.I would kiss you just to comma the moment but I don't know where my mouth has been. At night, I lie awakeeven in my sleep. Tonight, my jaw feelsmispronounced— I forgot to shave my faceand now I can't stop touching the quotations fuzzing my cheeksuntil a period burrows through my gut like teeth. What if my body is actually trying to ask younot to make me an asterisk in a text about anything human?I am a female man but I am not a footnotethat will lie down silently. I am pregnant five minutes ago, will be for the past eleven weeks,but I can't leave my context. I lie here, twisting among sheets, and bleedright through the page. [End Page 172] I know I should end the poem here, but I have a right to be saved. Yet, so long as I freeze the moment,I am still pregnant -ish. AndI don't want to be past tense— not when I could be presentand also full of the future. [End Page 173] Arien Reed Arien Alana Reed, MFA, a pushcart nominee, is the lunatic left in charge of the free "Fresno & Online Writers' Workshops" on Eventbrite. His chapbook The End was recently unleashed on the world by Roaring Junior Press, his unpublished collections have been finalists for the Kore Press, Grayson Books, Press 53, and Inlandia poetry prizes, and his ravings and scribbles have somehow crawled their way into Oberon, Florida Review, Sonora Review, High Shelf Press, J Mane Gallery, Allegory Ridge, and others. Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press