MARGARET ANN GRABER

Masturbation

 

All I need’s a blank screen
& one fuckable font,

one I could go to bed with,
& a window in the woods

where my reflection blurs
the trees. Damn it, Donald Trump

is President. Thursday night
& I’m dancing in my room.

A housemate plays banjo down the hall.
We’re in the South, so our bodies loom large

like the trees. Sometimes I think I never left,
though I was gone one pirouette

around the sun. Long enough for the compost
to turn twice over, for the potato’s eyes

to gaze down. A year ago I headed west,
flung my arms open to the Pacific,

tossed my lead heart to the sea.
Now every time I touch myself in the dark,

I imagine heat to be the molasses
of our bodies. Sometimes I touch

my shadow on the wall & ride
my pillow straight into the sunset.

 

 

 

Margaret Ann Graber is a poet from the Midwest. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University and a BA from Indiana University. She has received grants and fellowships from The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Luminaries Cultural Foundation. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Southern Indiana Review, The Adroit Journal, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. Find her online at maggiegraber.com.