Business Trips

by Lauren Bender

I pack my identity guides,

flip and re-flip the pages in my quest to make
a catalog
not just of what I am and not just of

what I think I am
or what I would like to think I am
but what I could be. Most important of all

those possibilities, and the way
my astrological label can tell me

I’m bold and confident and aggressive

and I can latch on to a delusion that it’s all there,
hidden under the surface personality

that has always been the exact opposite.

I hide out in my hotel room hunched over various
typologies, chanting identity, identity,

identity

as if the word itself, like magic, must give me
something to point to in my defense.

I tongue the taste of introversion
and harmony-seeker and judgmental,

more delicious than whatever is happening
outside the door, where all those people
roam and bump against each other and never seem worried

they may not know themselves well enough
to be ready for such raw reality.
&

Lauren Bender

Lauren Bender lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others.

artist: morysetta


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