Sometimes you just have to cut & run.

•

I was in the virgin court, sweet flower 
at the feet of the May Queen—and
beating up boys in the playground, I was
a pitiful 35 on the shrink’s GAF scale 
(global assessment of functioning): 
defiant at home/poor impulse control/
my wild girl fire was spinning—
they told me to shut up, be sweet, keep
your shirt on—I laced my black hi-tops,
loaded my cousin’s shotgun.

•

Don’t lose your place. 


		Stand in line to see 
		the priest each day. He hugs us
		too tight, too long.


		Mrs. Reid ties us to chairs, 
		hits us with rulers 
		for flirting with boys.


		The diocese says: these
		are the movies good catholic girls should see.


Say your prayers.


I learned the prayer of men hurting girls:


		say hi to the nice man/be polite/
		forget the torn jeans open-road
		open-mouth-insert-cunt—any girl 
		who says cunt
		is one.
When my old man neighbor
tried to kiss me,
I remembered my place, 15 years old,
it was second.
								
•

Did I say there’s no place for a girl to live in this country of fear?			

•

In the small place, 
the fetus of the world’s inside you growing:
clot of its bloody voice; 
it’s the size of a seed,—turning 
your body against itself, cave 
of uterus filling with blood of 
world, world, baby fetus,
there, there.


You can never go back to your young girl fire, apple tree, fat spring air.

•

Girl in the wardrobe mirror. 
Stares into the eyes of no one she knows.


Did you think you couldn’t crumble?
			

You decide your breasts are repulsive.
There is no one as ugly as you.
You decide to break yourself.

Girl in the wardrobe mirror, 
slams her arm against the door, forearm
hits the dark wood, Again, Again,
swinging the door on its hinge until
the body answers: exquisite, 
until the yellow-green bruise and she is 
home again in her body. 


Blue girl, this is your new bruise.
This is your torn-jeans-open-road.
This will give you something no one
can take, something of your own 
to watch over. Something to mother. 

•
			
You keep cheap wine in your closet,
and valium for when your boyfriend comes.


He broke up with you, but every week
he picks you up & fucks you
in his car—in the backroad parking lot.
You pretend he loves you.

•

You turn towards him 
in the backseat of his beat-up buick:
you see his mouth yawing & yawing &


no sound


the fat palm of his hand’s 
coming at you/shoving
your head down/open your mouth
his cock jams your mouth full/

again/again/you’re back in the mirror/
you slam his cock to the back of your throat/
you don’t care where your mouth is,

•

Now you got it, girl, you’re starting to leave the body/
bathe in its sensation/drug it
so the pain stays dull/
where do you go?


In the space between
the hand clutching the car door & the floating off,
it’s hard, isn’t it, because it hurts too much, there was a man once
who scared you, there was a man a thousand times who scared you, ask
any woman,


She’ll say: He turned into someone else, he wouldn’t stop, he grabbed me.

•

When you leave the body, where do you go?


To a blue bruise/second grade/click of new shoes?
Apples/chiffon/the dead?


no			

		you’ve got to 


say that sliding

			goodbye to the body and go

•

Bitch, don’t go crazy on me.

But you don’t hear him, because the body,
your body in the backseat 
is starting to break away,


and you see the body translucent(your body) 
on the vinyl, legs splayed open and the body(your body)
full of water, so full you are a fish holding
an ocean inside,


		you see your skin breaking apart, and there’s 
water everywhere, and blood, and the world’s 
in a sac on the floor, 

		 you watch yourself pick it up, watch
as you bring it to your teeth, bite the sac open,
a thousand voices spill out onto the floor.

•

Floating

	now

	above your body, you see 

so much water, washing the body,

		washing the dead world,	

						you are

		water

			open mouth


sky

Listen to a reading of the poem.