the animatronic model has a broken metatarsal by Hannah V Warren

Associate poetry editor Kenley Alligood on today’s bonus poem: Warren deftly evokes what was, for many of us, a formative childhood experience in the form of 1993 cult classic Jurassic Park and weaves it together with a soft melancholy. Where Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler pronounces “Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the earth,” Warren’s speaker grapples with the negative effects of social pressures on the self-worth of women. Her poem hopes for a world that could be different, a better place for the ones who come after her.

the animatronic model has a broken metatarsal

when the dilophosaurus unhinges its silicone jaw
you think you can see yourself in the back of its throat

you could be poisonous if you wanted
you could fill your pores with primordial venom
& hang a sign around your neck that says
                        don’t touch me I will kill you

the neckskin flaps are a dirty mirror
reflecting what you’ve always wanted for your body

you touch her gummy combs & hard eyes
            the same place you’ve touched her over & over
every week for ten years

you feel like you’ve grown into your body
learned to curve around corners
without jamming your angled hips on walls

your mother doesn’t visit anymore
but you’ve started bringing your sister
            you teach her dinosaur names
& she repeats them to you in alphabetical order

you wonder how long she’ll remember
fossil types when you’re gone
or when she’ll start measuring her waist
with kudzu & masking tape

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Hannah V Warren is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia where she studies poetry and speculative narratives. Her chapbook [re]construction of the necromancer won Sundress Publications’ 2019 chapbook contest, and her works have haunted or will soon appear in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, and Redivider.