A body exodus - Hannah Blaser Gott

We sit in winery windows, in fluorescent dorm rooms,

in Starbucks lobbies searching for wifi. We pretend that we

take back all we’ve lost; we show our teeth, rolling words

meant to kill around in our mouths, writing texts we

never send. Each day, we bury the faint whisper

that we are prey disguised as predators. Each night,

we watch it claw back to us from the shallow graves

we dig. We wonder about to end and ruin. There is

so much threatening to bleed out. The red of it all

does not scare us anymore. Already, so much

of our own blood has stained our hands. We ebb toward

the incantations of ruthlessness like they are Moses

on the mountain. When the commandments land

at our feet, we forget how to read. There is always

justification for the disobedience to our selves:

mostly that we don’t yet recognize the Body as our own.

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Hannah Blaser Gott grew up in rural Illinois before attending college in Iowa and eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys hiking with her dog, playing board games, and reading (mostly fiction, memoirs, and poetry - though not necessarily in that order). When it comes to writing, Hannah writes mostly creative nonfiction and poetry. Hannah’s work has appeared in Quercus, 3Elements Review, Eastern Iowa Review, and Alternating Current Press. She was also a finalist for the 2020 Midwest Writing Center’s Foster-Stahl Chapbook Contest.