Phoebe Glick is interested in preserving queer intimacies under a State which endeavors to render those movements impossible. She is a recent graduate of the Pratt MFA in Writing and co-edits The Felt, journal of otherworldly poetics. Recent work can be found on The Feminist Wire, the Fanzine, Queen Mob's Teahouse, and Big Lucks. Be her friend @phoebeglick .
NOT HARMLESS
My new house will be a safe deposit box. I put a down payment on one that can fit my entire body as well as a few of my things. I climb inside and find a Man already living there. Upon seeing me he asks if I have problem with nudity, because he’s invited his nude friend over later. I shake my head. There are two chairs – one with a cushion, one without. When I deliberate between them, the Man brings up women’s rights, and slides the cushioned chair toward me. Or maybe you want your right to choose, he says, and slides the uncushioned. Another Man strolls in. First Man repeats his original question, but this time as “we got a naked girl coming in later.” So not really a question. I am neither naked nor a girl. I am a deer and their tires easily smash my skull. This is the kind of world where you cover up your vagina blood by cutting your leg and blaming the bleeding on the leg. Legs are what carry you from the house to the escape route. Safe deposit boxes require a folding of the body, a retention of blood. The vagina pleats like a shuttered fan. There is nothing to gasp but exhaust. The arms open to nothing.