Kendra DeColo & Tyler Mills
What to Wear to Report Your Stalker to HR
Wear your most earnest look. Wear a watch.
Wear a shirt that says, I did not ask
for this. If you wear a skirt with diamond
stripes up the seam, the receptionist
will say, You look cute. Does this mean
you look stalkable? Does this mean
if the phone rings and it’s him, your
voice will erupt into a murder
of crows that cloud the halls so
fluorescent-lit corners push him away
with glossy wings? My friend never reported
her murder. That’s how it works. She left
her husband weeping in their tin-roofed
shack, the coils of a stove top counterfeiting
a smolder. Her nails were red that day.
She left him under the tin roof that some would want
to say was punctuated with stars, the metal,
I mean, not her body, how it buckled
under heavy rain. He wept and then when he wasn’t
weeping, he was a cloud. Do not think
of her body when you grind the pen,
scratching the letters of your stalker’s name
in thin blue ink. Think. That’s how it works—you
see him, write him in the spangled cells
of your neurons, and the cops read
your face and see you as him. Keep a diary
of his movements, one said, and you thought this:
sunflower fields, the tangle of metal
rusting in the scrapyard, horses gathering
slowly in the distance like a cluster of silver clouds.
Wear a whistle. Wear a lie-proof coat.
Wear the wind. The police chief counted my deaths:
first, red roses rotting on my windshield.
next, the window of my bedroom framing me
in a pilled, sky-blue bra. Then, my house.
Rape would be next, he said with a catch
in his breath, like a mothy bouquet.
As a child you waited for the wolf
to turn belly up, expose the jangled
teeth, a mouth of burnt opals. This probably
happens to you all the time, the cop smiles. Unlatch
your jaw. Let the stones fall to his feet.
The head of HR finally speaks, looking me up
and down―first my toes mashed into my boots, his eyes
dragging doubt up my legs, then my high-
necked sweater, my mouth, my eyes. Like a bat
adjusting its wings, he shuffles my list of incidents. Just look
at this evidence. Who is to say you aren’t stalking him?
Kendra DeColo is the author of two poetry collections: My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Verse Daily, VIDA, and elsewhere.
Visit here at: http://kendradecolo.tumblr.com/bio
Tyler Mills is the author of Tongue Lyre, winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (SIU Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, Boston Review, The Believer, Georgia Review, and Blackbird, and have won magazine awards from Gulf Coast, the Crab Orchard Review, and Third Coast.
Visit her at: https://tylermills.com/
Return to September 2017 Edition
Wear your most earnest look. Wear a watch.
Wear a shirt that says, I did not ask
for this. If you wear a skirt with diamond
stripes up the seam, the receptionist
will say, You look cute. Does this mean
you look stalkable? Does this mean
if the phone rings and it’s him, your
voice will erupt into a murder
of crows that cloud the halls so
fluorescent-lit corners push him away
with glossy wings? My friend never reported
her murder. That’s how it works. She left
her husband weeping in their tin-roofed
shack, the coils of a stove top counterfeiting
a smolder. Her nails were red that day.
She left him under the tin roof that some would want
to say was punctuated with stars, the metal,
I mean, not her body, how it buckled
under heavy rain. He wept and then when he wasn’t
weeping, he was a cloud. Do not think
of her body when you grind the pen,
scratching the letters of your stalker’s name
in thin blue ink. Think. That’s how it works—you
see him, write him in the spangled cells
of your neurons, and the cops read
your face and see you as him. Keep a diary
of his movements, one said, and you thought this:
sunflower fields, the tangle of metal
rusting in the scrapyard, horses gathering
slowly in the distance like a cluster of silver clouds.
Wear a whistle. Wear a lie-proof coat.
Wear the wind. The police chief counted my deaths:
first, red roses rotting on my windshield.
next, the window of my bedroom framing me
in a pilled, sky-blue bra. Then, my house.
Rape would be next, he said with a catch
in his breath, like a mothy bouquet.
As a child you waited for the wolf
to turn belly up, expose the jangled
teeth, a mouth of burnt opals. This probably
happens to you all the time, the cop smiles. Unlatch
your jaw. Let the stones fall to his feet.
The head of HR finally speaks, looking me up
and down―first my toes mashed into my boots, his eyes
dragging doubt up my legs, then my high-
necked sweater, my mouth, my eyes. Like a bat
adjusting its wings, he shuffles my list of incidents. Just look
at this evidence. Who is to say you aren’t stalking him?
Kendra DeColo is the author of two poetry collections: My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Verse Daily, VIDA, and elsewhere.
Visit here at: http://kendradecolo.tumblr.com/bio
Tyler Mills is the author of Tongue Lyre, winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (SIU Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, Boston Review, The Believer, Georgia Review, and Blackbird, and have won magazine awards from Gulf Coast, the Crab Orchard Review, and Third Coast.
Visit her at: https://tylermills.com/
Return to September 2017 Edition