My Body Is A Jungle Gym

You know the drill—every
body is anything              My body 

is a cave   My body is 
a pork roast—

bodybodybody—

There are children in my heart
playing tag

one finds another
in crash position

because the sun’s
doing that thing again

where it cuts itself
up like a moon

& these kids don’t
know a damn thing

about being
thankful—just

that I’m standing
is enough—the bus

drops them
off & their moms

ask what did you 
learn today & they say

someone
got stabbed

at the megamall in my throat—
a real west-side-story

throw down—
because this place is all

sharks & jets &
t-birds & scorpions

waiting for someone to step
up & say turn down

the rib-racket—

my lungs are tragedies 
& you’re sitting on my chest

Polley Poer (she/they) is a writer and poet from Fort Worth, Texas. Her work appears in and is forthcoming from The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, and elsewhere. She received the 2022 Academy of American Poets’ Arthur Rense Prize and earned an MFA from The Ohio State University.