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Ginger Ko

(The off switch is dead. / (The off switch is dead.


Residency

My heart squeezed big lumps of blood into my throat and each time no one even noticed how
brave I had to be.
(If I live or die, just an assembled woman.
(I have tried so hard to grow from a girl into a man.
(I'm fury–righteous of my body but in the everyday still wish to be a simple mother.
(With a body like an ox or wolf. (Instead, a naked housecat.)
(The light–switch of seeing all the way through to the fourth carbon copy.
(The off switch is dead.
(The off switch is dead.
(Imperfect retrieval hardly ever random.
(Imperfect retrieval serving whom?
(science, history, the legacy that propagates us
(poisons that bleed me clean and neat
)))))))))))


Ginger Ko is the author of Motherlover from Bloof Books, and her chapbook Inherit is forthcoming, also from Bloof. Her chapbook Comorbid is forthcoming from Lark Books in 2016.