[Facebook] splits at seams : instructions to reduce your look

Avoid: just : these : five : food : no : exercise : miracle : fruit

the other orchids posing that way

But I’m thistle

Spectrum of stick you meant poke me my own toe

Could be the hatred of mirrors : last year’s

concubine : her orchid glow

There is a lot to take in when it comes to Jenny Drai’s Body Wolf (Horse Less Press). It’s incredibly obtuse, and at times difficult to sift through, but when all the sifting is done, it’s a pretty important, and powerful piece of work. Drai points out how we are all sheep in wolf’s clothing. We are all following the next trend via Facebook. We are all looking to make ourselves better, when in reality, we are all just fine, but unfortunately, too blind to see it. Ad after ad, or wolf after wolf, we are scared of our own image because it doesn’t represent what we are told it should – be it physical, mental, or emotional image.

Really, what I wanted to tell you is that the body

purchases its own legacy

Its own series of rolling blackouts and negligent governmental

designs from which stem every appearance

of proximity to justice without any notion of adherence

The whole chapbook is an interesting look at sewing oneself together like a palimpsest – a fragile paper – and trying to make sure that nothing leaks, that one can hold themselves together, bypass the wolves, the false hopes, the quick fixes, and grow strong by maintaining as much composure is possible between the politics of image.

and the body must determine how to carry

weight and story

weight and story          as it ages

to golden tincture                    as it lives with a blue-eyed cat

the same man

the same nautilus for five years

his heart of chambers            resembles a wolf

the heart of a man

 

In the end, if we’re going to be truly ourselves, Jenny Drai is imploring us to pay less attention to the walls of social media and politics – the wolf – and focus more intently, and intimately on what we actually deserve for our own well-being.

 

Grab your copy of Jenny Drai’s Body Wolf from Horse Less Press. 

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