{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Femily-perez-and-sasha-west-413Pr0yY","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Keeping the beast from beasting: a conversation with Emily Pérez and Sasha West ","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/e304ec19-b717-45a1-8bd1-255bd36a38c8/63f54cb5-ede0-4257-b0af-6a1afb1a925e/poetry-medicine-for-the-soul-final-logo-use-for-web.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie. Episode 6 features Emily Pérez and Sasha West. Emily Pérez reads “How I Learned to Be a Girl” from her book What Flies Want, and Sasha West reads “Habitable,” from her book How to Abandon Ship.\n\nHOW I LEARNED TO BE A GIRL\nBy Emily Pérez\n\nIf the beast is unpredictable you must traverse\nin postures of submission. Easier to crawl\nwith your face down toward the earth, nape exposed, expecting\nto be struck, which may draw cold contempt, at best compassion.\nFragility may inspire a desire to protect. I learned young to dance\nthose careful steps around the unexploded mines\nwhere ground was not yet gutted.\n\nHoly, she was, the woman\nwho stood beside the beast, and I aimed\nto be just like her, turning my arrow toward\nmy chest. I learned the songs that lulled, the charms\nthat ironed flat the prickling ruff along his neck, the hair that spiked\nalong his spine when agitated, and when from his sleep guttered a fitful\ngrowl or grinding teeth, I placed, just like a night-guard, my careful wrist\ninside his mouth.\n\nHABITABLE \nBy Sasha West\nHow in courting, we compared childhoods:\nrunning a finger over the nubby globe,\nhalf red with codes:\ndeforested, desertified, deserted.\n\nMy family wasted water:\norange marigolds in a single line. His washed\nclothes & sidewalks. In school we learned\nwater as a system\nof arteries. In the mysteries\nI read: bodies bled\nout. The teacher asked us\nto imagine we were the woman\nin a Yemen without water:\nopening her door\nto the neighbor’s news, gathering\nclothes and goods. Goodbye house. Goodbye hill.\n\nBeing inside the sharpest pain:\ntrying it on again and again: my body\nexpanded into the world\nthrough her door. What was\nwrong leaked into me. Every year, more\ntumbleweeds ready to burst against our car\nwith a loud crack. And his school assembly with slides.\n\nThe Before shots: a green lush happiness, pulsing—.\nOnly our parents could really imagine\nus in a different childhood. Can I say we\ndidn’t know? Or did—and\ndidn’t care when we had\nher? What the body wants is deeper\nthan the mind.\nThe world expanded\ninto my body. My body wanted more room\nto fit the pain in.\nA globe. A belly.\nIf I look backwards, I can still !nd no map\nfor this—\nworld as it spins out. Human need\nto tamp the worry down into the body. Now\nwhen I imagine\nthe sharpest pain: you\nare older. You open your door."}