“Billiards,” by Jen Ryan Onken (Poetry ’20)

2020 poetry alum Jen Ryan Onken was recently featured in the LEON Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “Billiards” below:

Billiards

The tusks of female elephants were straighter than the males’. The tusk of the average- sized female elephant yielded five billiard balls. Sales documents of that time often refer to the ivory of female elephants as ‘billiard’. 
~a placard in Stone Town, Zanzibar

To be called the thing 
your body’s used for, 
that’s metonymy. 
I’ve never heard 
a woman called 
Fuck but I don’t 
speak all the 
languages. It’s true 
in English women
call men Dicks.
When I look at
an elephant I don’t
see a billiard ball, 
but marauders
did. Using only her 
head an elephant 
can level a tree
or a hillside…

Read the rest of this poem, as well as an additional poem by Onken, here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/issue-8-jen-ryan-onken/