A member of the self-appointed 
body police just informed me 
I have a “boy’s body.” I asked her why 
she felt the need to try to make a stranger 
feel bad. I said, “Are you insecure
or something? Because, honey, 
you look fine to me.” 
She went very red. Seriously, 

what other reason is there for a stranger 
to say something about anyone
else’s flesh-mask? 
I am tall. I have broad shoulders, 
small breasts, and no hips 
to speak of. I’m built like a triangle, 
and you know what? 
I am so freaking strong. 
I can plow through anything. 
I can run forever and never get tired. 
I do not have a “boy's body,” 

or a “girl's body.” I have MY body 
and it is very good at what it does. 
And the thing is, even if my body couldn’t 
do the things that it can do, 
it still houses my mind. 
Everybody’s body 
(whatever the level of physical ability) 
carries around a beautiful mind. 
Every body should be honored for that.

—First appeared as a comment on Facebook (23 May 2015); published here as a “found poem” with author’s permission

Bethany W. Pope

is an LBA winning author, and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awards, the Cinnamon Press Novel competition, and the Ink, Sweat and Tears poetry commission; and one of her poems was recently highly commended for the Poetry London Competition. She placed in the Bare Fiction Poetry Competition and the Bristol Poetry Prize. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University’s Creative Writing program, and her MA from the University of Wales Trinity St David.

She is the author of several collections of poetry: A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012), Crown of Thorns (Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014). Her fourth, Persephone in the Underworld, is forthcoming from Rufus Books in 2016. Her first novel Masque has been accepted by Seren and shall be released in 2016.

Work by Ms. Pope has appeared in numerous publications: Anon, Art Times, Ampersand, The Galway Review, The Prague Review, Sentinel Quarterly, The Delinquent, De/Tached, The Writer’s Hub, The Blue Max Review, Envoi, Poetry London, New Welsh Review, Poetry Review Salzburg, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Every Day Poems, The Brooklyn Voice, And Other Poems, Magma, The Prague Review, Words &, Music, Music &, Literature, The Coffin Factory, The Quarterly Conversation, Tribe, Turbulence, Tears in the Fence, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Bone Orchard, Acumen, The Antigonish Review, Bare Fiction, The Broadsheet, Ariadne’s Thread, The Black Light Engine Room, The Lampeter Review, London Grip, and Planet.

Her work is due to appear in the following anthologies: The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), Gothic Anthology (Parthian Books), and Raving Beauties (Bloodaxe Books).

bethanywpope.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Six Poems by Pope in The Galway Review (27 March 2013); includes “12th Avenue West,” “Jane,” “Mothers,” “Pain,” “St. Nicholas,” and “Wisdom”

⚡ Walk on Air, a poem on the death of Seamus Heaney, in Eyewear THE BLOG (August 2013)