Exclamations of the Feminine Gender - Julie Benesh

I have a facility correctional:

voice sentenced to be passive;

imperative I be interrogative?!

Were I to be infinitively subjunctive

you would be conditional,

call out my irregular,

semi-archaic, italicized mood

punctuated with period.

I'd contract

become fragment

abandons subject-verb agreement

runs on committing disorderly speech

acts, inverted, do sense that make you know I mean

what sorry I’m not a double negative.

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Julie Benesh is author of the chapbook ABOUT TIME from Cathexis Northwest Press and has published work in Tin House, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, JMWW, Maudlin House, New World Writing, Cleaver, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Warren Wilson College's MFA Program and recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Read more at juliebenesh.com.