Rebecca Beauchamp
​

Would navel-gaze but my tits might stop the view

1.

I logged on ‘cuz I wanted to know the cogito like the tongue might know an after dinner
mint. I lick the edge of the frame and say ouch. Where every moment constitutes my
tongue’s wilted shadow I am finally talking the talk. No one sees me.


2.

Becoming invisible was a gesture of mending. Not like I did anyway but. I am most
complete when you imagine me being you. A pared fingernail. An inflection snaps open,
data wavers. Narrative reveals nothing. I will post pictures of myself everywhere til you’re
convinced I’m a woman.


3.

History is a series of failed revelations. Frank Bidart said this not me. I am always a slut
plagiarizing but my ineffable girlish mimetics are so endearing you can’t help but want to
draw me. Hi! So the synonym of jaw has an interior: it is the greyed boardroom of every
LLC ever. My avatar’s skin whitens in the annals.


4.

In the boardroom Dave M’s tie looks scribbled on. My sex color is Crayola lilac. It is also
this story. Describing existence is a kid’s game though a good poet might claw through it.
Steady backstroke across a sea of curdled milk. I must be mature. Which means I must
seduce you. Imagine this were a chatroom. Imagine you’ve said zero.


5.

Dave M is probably the CEO of Inverted Jaw LLC but he might not be. With every ounce
of furniture in the room vying to be marble DM says Rebecca bend over. I do because his
seed is language. I am so full of poems but I feel guilty. I am pregnant with something
worse than money. Who says the lyric I is dead? First of all not me. I am pissing on a
swath of plastic in the Dunkin Donuts bathroom so I can write about it later. Stay positive.


6.

Typos I have made while writing: No one see’s me. A pair of fingernails. Data waters.
Narrative reveals narrative. Through a good poet might claw through. Fist of all not me.
Payola lilac. I am too much the craftsman to know anything about real life.


7.

With the light like this you recognize your body's wrought knowhow as a civic gesture
failing. Never mind your own two hands. Which clutch a shadow. One thousand finches
knocking around a tote bag’s pleathered gut.


8.

Dave M is like Rebecca bend the fuck over. I’m like okay. Who is the subject of this story.
Newsflash it’s you not doing anything about it, reading this poem with your eyes, face,
slacked wrists. You read around my body. You refresh the page. Shut the whole system
​down. I win without asking.

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REBECCA BEAUCHAMP is a poet, media artist, & composer from Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she was the recipient of the 2014 Wagenheim Literary Award, and an MFA student in Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of NECESSITY OF FOREPLAY (Gauss PDF) & Poems About Bulimia (Hysterically Real).