Five-Year Plan
Like the Soviets, my body had a plan
for every phase of development.
First hair in places where it wasn't meant
to grow, bramble covering the compound.
Then curves like water waiting for a dam.
Then electricity. And worse, a slight
atomic humming in my underground,
the pulse of something nuclear all night—
adolescence, a make of tyranny
I couldn't stand against. What to cut back?
What to prune or hack into obedience?
My coal and oil, my machinery,
too much heat for my requirements,
all production speeding out of whack.
Jehanne Dubrow
Red Army Red
TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2012 by Jehanne Dubrow
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission