For the Fifty (Who Formed PEACE With Their Bodies)
Philip Metres

In the green beginning,
          in the morning mist,
                              they emerge from their chrysalis

of clothes: peel off purses & cells,
          & Gap sweats, turtle-
                    necks & tanks, Tommy’s & Salvation

Army, platforms & clogs,
          abandoning bras & lingerie, labels
                    & names, courtesies & shames,

the emperor’s rhetoric of defense,
          laying it down, their child-
                    stretched or still-taut flesh

giddy in sudden proximity,
          onto the cold earth: bodies fetal or supine,
                    as if come-hithering

or dead, wriggle on the grass to form
          the shape of a word yet to come, almost
                    embarrassing to name: a word

thicker, heavier than the rolled rags
          of their bodies seen from a cockpit:
                    they touch to make

the word they want to become:
          it’s difficult to get the news
                    from our bodies, yet people die each day

for lack of what is found there:
          here: the fifty hold, & still
                     to become a testament, a will,

embody something outside
          themselves & themselves: the body,
                     the dreaming disarmed body.