Mean Streak — Split Lip Magazine

Now I’m going to use you
like the most beautiful object in the world. I am
the duchess of supreme relinquishment and you
are my vassal. Submission is an ecstatic act, electric
like datura glowing in the oppressive night
or the sound of your boot coming down
on a smooth mirror of ice. There is something sexy
about the term cold hard cash. There is use value
in falling apart. When I wrap myself in silk
to lick orange-blossom glaze from the tines of my fork
at a table for two do I become your commodity
fetish? Theorists will say I got it backwards.
I am backwards in more ways than one. Beings
become things things become beings.
That is the way of this world. I will
have your way with you if that is your thing.
Most base of social relations. Most tender
this cut of meat hanging from its hook.

Kaitlyn Airy (@KaitlynAiry) is a Korean American poet and adoptee. Raised on a small island in the Salish Sea, she currently resides in Charlottesville, where she graduated with an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. Her poems are featured or forthcoming in Moss, Post Road, Poetry Northwest, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Online, FENCE, Poets.org, Chestnut Review and elsewhere. She serves as an associate editor for Poetry Northwest.