Revenge Porn – The Journal

There is plenty to regret. The cigarette tilted

!50! in a china-blue ashtray. The little smudge

of lipstick on my teeth. How I stare like a buckshot

!50! target into the camera, my hair flipped like mare’s

tail. How everything about me is asking.

!50! This is a fossil of me ossified into a half-moon

grabbing at my ankles, my two fig nipples reaching

!50! out like the arms of a tired child. Look

at my breasts and the ways they can be used

!50! against me. The way he still has me

flat, malleable, wearing a younger face,

!50! able to be uploaded. The inexhaustible resource

of my body spread out onto his skull-colored bed. A virus

!50! eating itself from the inside out. The smallness

between my legs pixilated. It is my own shape

!50! that I am afraid of. The weapon

of my body, how it points back at itself

Meghann Plunkett is a poet, coder, and lover of dogs. She is the 2017 winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize judged by Natalie Diaz. She was a finalist for the 2017 North American Review’s Hearst Poetry Prize as well as the 2016 Narrative Magazine's 30 Below Contest. Meghann has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets in both 2016 and 2017. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Rattle, The North American Review, Washington Square Review, Adroit Journal, The Paris-American, Muzzle Magazine, Winter Tangerine, decomP Magazine, storySouth, among others. Her essays, erasures and animated poems can be found in Luna Luna Magazine. She is the writer in residence at Omega Institution and the director of The Black Dog Tall Ship Writing Retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, MA. Visit her at meghannplunkett.com.