Winter 2001
	Liza Charlesworth
	The Defiant Body
	The defiant body needs to be unique: left-handed,         beige & allergic, ectomorphic-flummoxing me         & the doctors, whose smug roadmaps                                                              get them lost every time around the slick loop-da-loops of those peculiar intestines-
	Who put the kidneys there?
	The defiant body-emboldened & shy- has two left breasts, one deaf ear         & a periwinkle eye, lazy as July                                   but oddly philosophical
	Right now the thyroid is gently expanding like a helium balloon
	& the heart moves                           to its own eccentric beat-         a spirited but homely dancer
	The menstrual cycle, too, is on a Dali-esque clock, prompting the nurses in white to throw up their hands, wonder how the thing works
	But perhaps, only because I can't shake it off, I have learned to love a body         that lives to break the rules
	and it will do what I ask it to- I think it will do it!- but when it's good & ready,
	when the body says now.