Fourteen lines that have nothing to do with your dick

None of the words for my vagina
Belong to me. I don’t think of it
As a pussy, purring, sleek; a twat,
A quim—I wish. Whispered, a cunt.
Ha. A country undiscovered, dirty Will
Be damned. It’s not a flower, not a peony,
Not a rose nor a spraddle-petalled orchid.
I’m not sweet and I don’t have to be.
I won’t melt on your tongue, a pastille.
There, I call it, a place that exists
When I want it, a miracle I call into being
Myself; it isn’t defined by what it allows.
I’m not a reflection in the mirror
Of your vanity.

Daisy Bassen is a poet and community child psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Salamander, McSweeney’s, Smartish Pace, and [PANK] among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 and 2021 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. Born and raised in New York, she lives in Rhode Island with her family.