that must gnaw off its leg to escape a trap,
the trap being the version of you I carry —
a committed method actor, Mom,
her lines delivered not from woods, but
the doorway of my childhood bedroom
barring escape, sneering straight
into my face, you, incorrigibly reduced
to the one moment you asked
if my love for my brother
(who we once called sister, daughter)
was “some sort of a political statement,”
words I use to cut myself
from you — a red swatch
of instinct limping through trees
on three black feet, so unlike E
when he removed his breasts,
clear which side of the blade he was on.
Click here to read Eben Bein on the origin of the poem.
Image: Running stag by Beatrice Murch, licensed under CC 2.0.
Eben E. B. Bein (they) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator, activist, and multi-disciplinary artist. They were a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their poems can be found in the likes of PINCH, Nimrod Journal, New Ohio Review, three anthologies or in their chapbook Character Flaws (Fauxmoir lit 2023), which explores judgment in intimate relationships. They currently live on Pawtucket land (Arlington, MA) in a house they co-bought with their husband and poet friends, where they are completing their first full-length collection about parent-child conflict, healing, and love.
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