Emily Mohn-Slate | Girl in the Street | Poets Resist

Emily Mohn-Slate's poems and essays have appeared in New Ohio Review, Crab Orchard Review, At Length, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, The Falls, was a finalist for the 2016 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize offered by University of Pittsburgh Press, and the 2017 Blue Light Book Prize offered by Indiana University Press/Indiana Review. She teaches creative writing at Chatham University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Also by Emily Mohn-Slate: The Colossal: Iris van Herpen and Girls Write the Museum & then she wailed & screamed & coughed on her own drool Landscape with Ex-Husband Lingering

Poets Resist
Edited by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner
May 24, 2018

Emily Mohn-Slate

Girl in the Street

It’s the way water eats rock hey baby why don’t you smile? how it slips inside a hairline crack hey mama suck my dick splits it wide from within girl can you handle 13 inches? I want to wear the jackal’s teeth in the street its high gaze but it’s just me a woman walking in my clogs and glasses My daughter just learned to walk girl where you going? still unsteady on her feet baby you got a boyfriend? she barrels into the street head first nice ass girl shrieking with glee bitch why don’t you smile? I’m almost 40 girl don’t you want some of this? I should be able to talk back by now right? Words break bedrock — I remember mine — fierce slab layered with love and yes bitch come on back their voices became hands became dogs became knives