Kara Dorris: 5 Poems
Self-Elegy with Bulletproof Vest
CW: sexual content
What was my texture, you asked, as if I’ve felt
myself up, which no one confesses
to in public. My texture was diamond. A girl’s best
friend wasn’t shiny, but Teflon. Teenage Kevlar
of I know you are but what am I & whatever.
That’s what she said. I thought precious
stones were the way to go because expense,
excess, & desire were in every
Kay’s Jewelry commercial. My first boyfriend
didn’t gift diamonds, but gold I wore everyday
even when I showered, until my wrist
turned green. Turns out it was a deception.
No one in his family bet we’d last the spring.
I was hard, like the rubies of first
blood I refused to give up, refused to let
him break bones & boundaries
by coming inside me. I understood the process
of conversion, knew blood on bed
sheets could turn into garnet the next
morning. I knew the score. Yes,
I was hardcore. I broke up with him on Valentine’s
Day. I didn’t have the words for depression
only I can’t face the world beyond
novel pages & I haven’t showered for six
weeks & I’m wearing my pjs from last month & you come over
with a present I don’t want or need. Still, you stayed
in my absence & failed self-policing. I wasn’t precious
stone, I was just girl, diamond & disabled
& unhackable, by which I mean distant
& unknowable. You & I just didn’t know it yet.
Rorschach Test
Medusa as Lost & Found
Why didn’t you run away? They ask. Shit, fourteen-year-old girls are such fucking messes, all fake bravado as faux kevlar in situations of no consequence. Knife to throat, who do you sacrifice: yourself or your mother, brother, & father sleeping down the hall? Girls, after all, are taught be quiet & follow. They say good behavior receives better treatment. They say, be good & we’ll go to heaven. You didn’t know all the ways girls can be raped (public school sex education). You were supposed to rescue yourself; girls are only children when adults say so; & if you don’t speak out, you are an accomplice. As if action is easy, as if silence is always wrong. We are rorschachs chained by ankles to trees. Shrouded in the library. Taken by strangers, expected to ask strangers for rescue. Call us newsworthy. Throw stones. Take our heads instead of answers.
Secret Smores Ingredients
Hummingbirds fly in reverse but smell nothing & weigh less than a nickel.
An albatross sleeps for seconds at a time in flight, but what are seconds
worth unless we hold our breath. I don’t know if my envy is worth it.
We buy protection plans & warranties because not everything
is created equal. Flowers are not just decorative. Lavender & freesia heal.
Forget Me Nots & belladonna & hellebore poison & make you believe in something.
& that is why I don’t believe in gifts that die. Why I don’t believe in
the aesthetic of the cute, in collecting things I want to hug & smother.
The cute are always consumed & killed & then shit out. Infantilized & made nice.
Female dragonflies will fake their own deaths to avoid unwanted male grab-ass.
They will roast themselves over a campfire, lounge on marshmallows
& graham crackers while listening to our urban legends. The secret ingredient
has always been the blood & guts of something smaller,
sacrificing legs & wings to honor a different horror story legacy.
Mortal Kombat as Wilderness
At the arcade, we played Mortal Kombat. The secret was to keep pushing as many buttons as fast as we could. No strategy as strategy. We had double-d boobs & tiny waists & never wondered how we didn’t fold in half. I wanted to be She-Ra with a sword & Pegasus, but I was Ophelia—I hadn’t discovered crip theory or Adrienne Rich yet: until we know the assumptions we are drenched in, we cannot know ourselves. Now, my lover says female action figures’ feet are too small, too many high heels, they can’t stand or fight back. Mass lessons in disinformation.
so many self-fulfilling
prophecies to lean
into to prop up
Kara Dorris is the author of three poetry collections: HitBox (Kelsay Books 2024), Have Ruin, Will Travel (2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020) from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in Redivider, Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Wordgathering, and Puerto del Sol, among others literary journals, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (2011). Recently, she edited the anthology Writing the Self-Elegy: the Past is Not Disappearing Ink (SIU Press, 2023). For more information: karadorris.com.