Having not
touched myself
in some time
owing to
the erosion
of incremental
sadnesses
that can detach
a person
from their body
as cleanly
as a cliff
is sheared from
a coastline,
the doctor
informs me
that loving
myself
is now my
job. So I take up
my own two
fingers and
work them with
the seriousness
of earned salt
and an imaginary
salary
into the littoral
cavern of
my pussy. And
like a wave
that sweeps the
unsuspecting
from the rocky
breakwater,
quite suddenly
everyone
who has ever
fucked me is
fucking me
again—my
wife’s warm breath
between my
thighs, crooning
softly I’m
a good girl
into the crook
of my lifted
knee, and each
lover who
came before
her, teasing
me open,
the little suck
and pop of it—
till I am
wide-eyed and
gulping.
Scholars say
in Homeric
tradition
when you recite
a character,
you not only
become that
character,
you join the
chorus of
any poet
that has sung
it before
you. Oh
rhapsode, trusted
storyteller,
traveling
staff in hand—
I take up
these voices
whispering,
crying,
laughing,
choking
on my pleasure.
I’m singing
the long
epic poem
of my body,
joining the
collective chorus,
becoming
the character
that once loved
me and now
remembers
how easy
it is, good
girl, to love
me still.
Keetje Kuipers’s fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (BOA Editions, 2025), was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is Editor of Poetry Northwest.
Elsewhere on the site: read more about Issue 21.2, and peruse a special folio on writing about sex, including an essay by Kuipers.
