Erica Hoffmeister

#MOMBOD

post a photo of yourself with the appropriate hashtag:
#mombod

consider an editing app, consider a calorie counting app,
consider a different pose entirely, consider deleting it altogether

explore instead, as instagram puts it, meaning scroll down and
and down and down and down until you’re inhaling selfies

filtered into a fog, full-makeup-post-workout,
expensive yoga pants and six packs and crop tops and bikini

bods, as your teenage magazines used to call them--
keep scrolling, faster until it is a blur of

tiger stripes and cellulite and granny panties and saggy skin
and pregnant bellies and pubic hair and postpartum portraits of

bodies and bodies and bodies. choose one to analyze
closely, choose your own. observe the ways you’ve

transformed, evolved, changed, not changed at all,
a puddle of flesh flummoxed somewhere in the middle

of this designated spectrum. you must pick a side
the social media posts spell out like an omen: are you

a #before, or an #after? a mother or a #milf?
how definitive a proclamation: mother and body

what literal, weighted, nuanced evocation, as if
they ever existed apart from one another, as if

they can ever remain so within the boundaries of
your identity’s serrated edges, as if you’re re-writing

the entire thesaurus under the letter ‘M,’ under ‘B,’ under
‘self’– resign to not go back, as there is no going back. do not

choose a side, do not keep scrolling and do not say
get my body back. you are not a lost girl fallen down a well

or a ghost hovering over a crumpled shape. you,
you are a mother now, and this – this is your body.
​

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Erica Hoffmeister is a rambling soul from Southern California who now lives in Denver, where she teaches college writing and advocates for media literacy and digital citizenship. She is the author of two poetry collections: Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019), but considers herself a cross-genre writer, with a variety of works published in several journals and magazines. She is also an editor at the Denver-based indie press, South Broadway Press. Learn more at: http://www.ericahoffmeister.com/.