If spring is Earth’s eternal morning-after,
then March is her walk of shame
home: open-toed, smudged,
each tree and landscape raw
and unfamiliar as she trudges unbalanced,
skin glittering in alien light. Everyone
has opinions about how she moves.
If you try and tell me a walk of shame
doesn’t exist, it’s just an invention
of our culture, tell me money doesn’t exist
either. Say it’s so warm I don’t need a jacket.
Say the body is a temple
as though it were a place
I could leave.
April Ranger is a poet, playwright, and performer. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Muzzle Magazine, apt, and the anthology Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls (Writebloody, 2014). She grew up in Maine and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.