Laura Davenport's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2009, Crab Orchard Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Sow's Ear Poetry Review, among others. She is the recipient of a Hackney Literary Award, James River Writers/Richmond Magazine Best Poem award, and a Meridian Editors' Choice award. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Manifesto for World Domination
Find a pretty girl and follow her
until you cannot hate the world
any more. I mean no more than
other mornings, when the shops
are closed for Sunday and the men
on corners loiter because they own the world.
Watch their heads turn as she passes
like the beaks of crows, like a cat
watching those crows
with a burr in its throat: escaping sound
whose message is coiled muscle
unable to spring. Follow a pretty girl
and you will understand the world—
the ways eyes glaze, glance off,
collide with yours, her frame tight
or loose, or short, or small, or rolling—
covered or uncovered. Wait till she looks
aside in shame, afraid of the bend
in her knees, rolls eyes up her thin-arched
brows. A pretty face heals ills. It’s delicious,
how she shows us to ourselves.