Ashe Prevett

The god of latex and plastics

litters the streets with its blessings, its yellowing trash
in the gutter almost appropriate among the fallen leaves.

It’s early morning: it walks along the curb a tightrope act, pulling from
the pockets of its crusty bathrobe pen caps, cheap phone cases,

condoms, both fresh and spent. If they’re lucky, a person could find one
fresh, the glint of sun reflecting off the remaining film of Astroglide. And maybe

that person will discover whether it’s true, that sucking on one of these
rare gifts, like a throat lozenge, makes you appear more fuckable, easier

to fall in love with forever and ever, amen. We’ve all been there: So full of want
that shame can’t find a place to sit. Once, I wanted 

to girl so badly that I entered a contest to become
the next generation of Barbie doll. 

Shrunken down. Plastified.
Foreign to pain or death. It was an enviable life. 

I didn’t make it past the audition;
M*ttel was looking for something more biologically accurate. 

[how to prove to even one entity that you are worth casting
in thermoplastic, reproducing thousands of times over] 

Still I didn’t stop. I had tests done, sent blood samples, even had a door installed
in my left breast—as if it were a small medicine cabinet—so that one could 

open it and watch the errant tick of my one heart. They sent back
a pink-pink shirt with a restraining order tucked inside.

What I’m saying, stranger, is that I get it: there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to be seen.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Ashe Prevett is the author of the chapbook, Still, No Grace, which won the Madhouse Press editors’ prize and a Georgia author of the year award. Her poems have been featured in such journals as West Branch, DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch and others. She currently serves as digital editor and associate poetry editor for Pleiades.