Re:Inventions by Fabiola Madrigal

Punch me delicately

trace the ridges of my ears

box me, bottle me up

and listen closely for

the rescinding, regressing,

yanked origin packed and

bound, reclaiming what

small mountains we had

built for ourselves

what small origins we

had refound, recreated,

resuscitated, towed into

cavernous open “you’s” and “oh’s”

and “don’t look like’s”

that she had said

to stay away from

no haircuts, no restylings,

formaldehyde dunked and coated,

clipped in neat straight lines

“why do you want to look like one

of them?”

then comes the surround sound

‘Fwoosh’ firing neurons, midsection

devoted, braking and punching the gas

all at once

erosion

My mind’s stalled, polluting country roads,

compiling week long shortages of my

many wrongs

“why complain? why do you complain?

just do the work and you’ll be fine.”

Fabiola Madrigal is a 24 year old from Wasco, California. She recently returned from studying abroad and is currently trying to figure out her place in the world while her Bachelor’s degree arrives in the mail. Her poems have been published in the Orpheus and A Sharp Piece of Awesome. You can find her @girasolesbloom on Instagram and @fablednixie on Twitter.