Drew rupard

Me, in a Bathing Suit

This reservoir was built to be perfect,
like the highways crossing Mona and Spring Lake.
All cylinder and vector. Made of rules
as they cleave our dis-ease into east and west.

We dipped in human and froze
into white statues of flood-lost,
marble-bodied nude boys
and were netted by lakeweed and pool noodles.

We stretched onto hot pavement
between those green hills. I felt, as I always do
in swimsuits, small and concentrated
in a form, impending and volatile,

the granddaughter of millennia
and mother of the rest of time
in the shape of a girl.
Long ago the Greeks took shape

from a quarry and buffed its heels until
a person stepped out in contrapposto.
Then returned and made another. I’ve heard
of Sappho, of men kissing men in those days.

They poured themselves into dead-end
and beautiful collisions. I felt it
in the reservoir, the wish for extinction—
save the cold, pretty things that stay.

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DREW RUPARD HOLDS AN MFA IN POETRY FROM BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY. SHE IS INTERESTED IN MYTHMAKING, THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE, AND THE ARS POETICA. DREW CURRENTLY LIVES IN NEW YORK.