Holly Day

Shoes

if it hadn’t been for the new shopping mall
they never would have found the bodies.
six skeletons, strung with dried skin
tied to trees in the heart of the forest.

after the bodies were identified
as coming from good, upscale families
that still lived in town, naming
some of the new roads leading to the shopping mall
after the dead girls
seemed like a good idea.

after further consideration, though
they decided to just give the girls
a really nice funeral.

Under the Sun

We have always gravitated towards things
that are tall. Tall mountains, tall people,
tall trees, big cocks. 5,000 years ago, when a man wanted
people to look up to him, he ordered the building of
tall pyramids, all statues, tall, phallic obelisks.
This is how we say
someone is important.

Even Jesus Christ is made taller,
and therefore, more important,
in our form of remembrance. The cross
adds another three or four feet
to his probably averaged-sized Mediterranean form.
The only time Jesus is pictured
off the cross
he’s either perched on the back of an above-average-sized donkey
or surrounded by very small children.

Perhaps it all comes down to
an obsession with male genitalia.
Man has the largest penis of the primate family,
and is damned proud of it. Just ask.
Perhaps this is why chimpanzees are satisfied
with fist-sized, practical tools made of twigs and blades of grass
while men have to build skyscrapers.

Maybe if women had been the ones in charge
of the statues, and buildings, and theology
the major cities of the world would have entirely different-looking
skylines. We might all live underground, worshipping
at the mouths of dark caves, quivering flats of quicksand,
to a god that speaks out of oceanic whirlpools. 

Or maybe the buildings would be built even taller.

 

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in The Cape Rock, New Ohio Review, and Gargoyle. Her nonfiction publications include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Piano and Keyboard All-in-One for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, and Stillwater, Minnesota: A History. Her newest poetry collections, A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), and Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing) will be out mid-2018, with The Yellow Dot of a Daisy already out on Alien Buddha Press.