Eponym

(tell me how they made her)

shark-mouthed, gap-toothed

free-wheeling, obstinate

little girl of too many

rolls and teeth, tearing

into worlds premature

in the years between

then and now she steeped

in words and dreams

swollen ambitions sugar-sweet

and cloy like sap

to hold her easily seduced

astray like a bullet fired

at the sun, blinded

and barreling, to the end.

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Lauren Gray is a writer and archivist with the Kansas Historical Society State Archives. Originally from Kansas City, MO, her poems are influenced by her childhood experiences in the Midwest, as well as her abiding love of the American Southwest, where she earned her BA in Creative Writing from the College of Santa Fe and her MA in U.S. History from the University of New Mexico. Her poems marry her love of history with her reflections on what it means to be a woman in 21st century America.