Virginia Konchan: My Gender Goes to Sleep

Bel Canto

Inside me is a black-eyed animal

struggling to get out.

Inside me is a failed attempt

at explanation, a frozen pizza,

a botched murder, and a consumptive,

fallen-woman heroine.  It’s not love

until someone is willing to die for you,

or quotes you out of context.

What is agony, but a pyre

hungry for ashes?

What is rapture, but

a dumpster emptied of trash?

My gender goes to sleep

and has a dream it is invulnerable.

My gender goes to sleep 

and has a dream it is inevitable,

this slow slog toward death

in the body of a ruminating cow. 

Hand me my stilettos.

Hand me my Ativan,

my floor-length evening gown,

my monocle, my spouse.

Today is an envelope of money

I will no doubt squander.

Hand me my opera glasses.

I want to shatter a champagne flute

with my perfect contralto;

I want to discomfit,

then bring down, the house.

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Author of two poetry collections, Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon, 2020) and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and three chapbooks, including Empire of Dirt (above/ground press, 2019), Virginia Konchan’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere.