Unbecoming

There are more important things, I know.
But my grandmother was a dancer,
went with a different boy every night
because she loved the feel of her slight hips
against tall men’s eyes.

Sometimes when I examine myself, limbs
and waist, I cannot find a single genetic link
to graceful. My spoon fingers
always drip accident.

I remember age 14, the gangly
anger of it, the way a mirror talks back
unkind, if you listen long enough.
The way I threw my razor out the window and revelled
in peach-down legs. The way I didn’t dance with boys.

I can still recall the way a baby feminist grins:
all teeth, a fistful of freckle-rage.

Roseanna Alice Boswell is a poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in: Driftwood Press, Pretty Owl Poetry, Capulet Magazine, and elsewhere. Find Roseanna on Twitter @swellbunny posting about feminism and her love of exclamation marks.