Audrey Gidman

I AM MYSELF & MYSELF IS A RIVER

I am myself & myself 
is a river winding
her way through 
a body that some days 
fits & some days can’t.
Body thin, body thick, body hips
& knees & wrists, 
body a little too
much sometimes, body 
not enough, body taking
up too much space, 
body needing to pull back, pull 
back, body bending 
in all the wrong ways, body eating
the embankments, body 
an embankment. I 
a body a river a home 
for something. I making 
my own way. I making 
a way that is made 
& remade this 
body & other bodies. 
I making something 
old as rivers. New 
as the edges of rivers. 
Old as stone
& skin & sand 
myself. Old 
as myself a river.

Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in The Night Heron Barks, Birdcoat Quarterly, Luna Luna, Rust + Moth, The Shore and elsewhere. She serves as assistant poetry editor for Gigantic Sequins and an editor for Newfound's Emerging Poets Chapbook Series. Her chapbook, body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press.