If there is just one thing I know,
one certainty amid the blinking
open eye of chaos, it is this:
I’m not wearing bras anymore.
Now I’ve tasted freedom—
weeks and weeks without cruel
underwires furrowing my skin,
without corralling wild beasts
into smooth, smothered, shapely
breasts, without thumb-hooking
straps to shimmy into impatient cups—
I’m never turning back.
No more will I agonize
over colors, materials, band
thickness, padding, strap tension,
elasticity, sex appeal, size charts.
The bra’s hook and eye grasp
on my life (so tight around the sides
I’m rubbed raw) has finally worn out.
Who’s with me? Now dawns a new era:
a jiggly, wobbly, bouncy, bountiful,
pointy and saggy, squishy and succulent,
beautiful, luscious, exuberant,
all-over liberating age for women.
We may have missed the ‘60s,
but it’s not hard to start a fire. Toss
your bras and forget about jogging—
our weight is no one’s concern anyway.
Sure, it will be distracting at first.
But I’ve been to Spain; I know society can cope.
And it’s not like anyone can stop us.
The very idea is titillating.
Terysa Dyer’s poems have appeared in Utah Life Magazine, and her poetry collection, “Snowman,” was featured as part of Southern Utah University’s Art of Literature Chapbook Series in 2015. Her poetry is currently on display alongside artworks as part of the Women, Surrealism, and Abstraction exhibition at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. She lives in Logan, Utah.