Disappearing Act
Ann DeVilbiss
I am clean as the space where a tooth once stood,
each past pain erased. I am sinking
into broad lines like a wife being rowed
through easy waters as damselflies fuck and
fuck and fuck. Sometimes it feels good, how
little you consider me, how nothing I do will ever touch you.
Call me invisible witness. I have become a woman
of a certain age. I no longer think of my breasts
as permanent so I show them off while dining out.
My water glass is never empty.
Ann DeVilbiss (she/her) has work published or forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Cul-de-sac of Blood, Soundings East, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and her book of spell poems, The Red Chorus, is available from White Stag (2025). A founding member of the Sublimity City Poetry Collective, she lives and works in Louisville.
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