Elisabeth Horan’s most recent poem to appear here was “The Gift of Not Being Me” (February 2018). 

After the Wars of Men
By Elisabeth Horan

Risky is my sharpest razor.
clean and smooth-bone skin

Lights up your eyes and
the night—I am not food

But rules should be broken
I am not medicine

But by God I come to heal—
Repeal my fellow human’s

Need and lust; her
avarice and crusted

Over mind and lips
y’all forgot to kiss.

We are the forgotten ones;
the ones in the Ward

There are no rules
about love being sane

About love not being a
reconnaissance mission

To put happiness
back into one’s brains

After the wars of men—
after the wars against us.