Two Poems from Steele Campbell

New

I want to be a woman
Without the sex.

Let me be
Free to ignore the size
Of my breasts—
No more prayers of blooming
Too late, too soon or
Unnoticed.

Rather, I will reclaim
This new weight of sophistication,
The ticklish blossoming
Against my shirt.

To abandon the fear
Of the blood coming
Or stopping. Blind to
The stares searching
For exposed skin.

Let me bask, untethered,
In senses burning
To the curling tips
Of my unshaved hair,
Tender as gold,
And all for me:

Only for me.




Cycles

I bled my love upon him
which he wiped off
curtly, leaving me alone—
hoping next time I wouldn’t.


Steele Campbell left his frozen Idaho mountain town for the culture and literature of the South and is completing his graduate thesis Auburn University on the fiction of Marilynne Robinson. He works as a student editor of Southern Humanities Review and his work has appeared in Rope and Wire, Touchstones, and is upcoming in The Boston Literary Review. You can visit him at his website at www.steelecampbell.net

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