for my humanities final i made a clay recreation of the vitruvian man 

clay squeezed through the gaps of my fingers like hamburger meat

there was a special delight in carving out the lines of his chest and abdomen

divine focus given to the placement of his nipples

a childish delight in forming a clay phallus the size of my pinkie nail and attaching it with

gentle pressure and a smirk

he’s well-endowed, our vitruvian man

(he’s not even vitruvian, is the secret

perhaps he isn’t even a man)

even through the missteps

i skewer him with a rod so he can stand upright 

and accidentally force his head clear off his body 

(i’m hospitalized for 10 days

even though i have pink hair and pink clothes and a soft protruding form 

for the first time, someone asks me if im a girl or boy or something else) 

the delight of the vitruvian man

is that on paper he is a man 

and in clay he is an eight-limbed flailing beast

undressed and unashamed 

with a narrow waist and hips made for grabbing and curls touching his shoulders

as he claims another victim to his ideals 

desire mirror-written to be read by the most open-minded of students 

our man teaches those who seek it out a master class 

in how to perfectly measure out the proportions of a body 

and still end up living inside a squirming, monstrous and wondrous form  

on how to fit into both a circle and a square at once