Rebecca Oet is a high school student from Solon, Ohio. She enjoys reading fiction and comic books, writing short stories and poetry, and watching anime. Rebecca has won multiple gold and silver keys for poetry in the Regional Scholastic Writing Competition & Exhibition. She is also the winner of 2017 River Of Words Youth Poetry Grand Prize, VOYA Magazine’s Teen Poetry Contest 2017 and the Short Poems challenge on Young Poets Network. She has published her poetry in Teen Ink Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, *82 Review, Dunes Review and JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly, and many others. 

The Smoke House

Rebecca Oet

Inspired by The Harem by Picasso

​

Skincanvas             pooling

                              wrinkling

at the corners of the room                         gazes rose gold.                     

stretched elastic where a man’s head |

Ankle to ankle tied with red smoke

pencil clasped between his thigh and calf

                          punched |

                           through  |

cigarette held to eraser

fumes drugging up all the girls.

That last one

in the corner

is just a mannequin. You can tell because

she has a face.

​