Suzanne Richardson

Bone Opera

They used to call me
Big girl big
Boned
Whale girl
I was swimming in a
Bone ocean
A big girl
In her big
Bone home
I was a girl unfurling
Bone fern

Bone girl
Bone dawn
I was eating
In a bone house
Drinking
Bone milk
To keep
Growing
Tectonic
Bones split
I grew into
A big jewel
Bone opal
All stares
Beg me to
Bone open

Some times
Big girls go
Bone quiet
When I walk by
They scream
My tall girl
Limbs
Are a
Bone riot
They drink me
Bone cold
With greedy stares
I am hunching
In my
Bone chair

Bone woman now
Tottering on highest heels
Breast city
A full breast and
Bone meal
All I want is to go
Bone numb
Don’t look
I’m no one
Hear them say I’m
Bone dumb

One day
I learn
In my neck
There are
Seven bones
I open
My bone
Throat
Sing my
Bone song
Bone story
Big boned woman
In all her
Bone glory
​
Bones don’t want
They just are
Bone boats
Taking you
To cities
To shores afar
When I am
Bone old
No longer
Able to
Bone roam
No more flesh
Flowers
Too bone sick
Or bone ill
Please will
Someone
Reach into
The bone thick
Into my
Sternum
And touch it?
Please
Love my
Touch my
Bones

Biography

Suzanne Richardson earned her M.F.A. in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Binghamton, New York where she's a Ph.D. student in creative writing at SUNY Binghamton. She is working on a memoir, Throw it Up, and a full poetry collection, The Want Monster. She is the writer of Three Things @nocontactmag, and more about Suzanne and her writing can be found here: https://www-suzannerichardsonwrites.tumblr.com/ and here: @oozannesay

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