Pussy Poem
2016
1.
Oh tender pussy,
hollowed out sacred chalice
holy crimson witness to being female in this world —
Attractor of atrocities
target of patriarchy
superpower
It was time.
To the door that was open and the door that is closed
I bid farewell
To the one abortion that wrecked me for years
To the dear deified and despised lady parts
Farewell to the rapes, to being a victim
farewell to hearing that I wanted it
To all the dicks, real and imagined
all that misplaced fear of strangers
To the rape anxieties taught to me by
my grandfather and my friends’ fathers
my father’s friends and the man I babysat for
and the date rapes, a surprise every time
and the incest fading now, but not ever, not really
To every finger, breath and thought that was shoved into me
To all the things that have gone inside
to simply vanish there
trapped inside me
that I calcified
in my wisdom
to bone.
Take it all.
Farewell
Yahweh and Adam and Abel and Caine
all of you and your damned sons
lining up and taking turns with me and my sisters
who acted like we all forgot, and went on
so sure of ourselves, never
only the stumble, the places we tumbled
into smooth stones, to fossils of bone
as if all that shredded embedded trauma
were a bad dream, a bad move
and it was
and it is.
Carted off now as medical waste
turned to stone like memories
turned to bone like some funky pearl in a stinky shell
Only this grit, this gate, this thing called rape
legitimized by them and swallowed by us
We who never had power in their world
their desire is not our power.
Women so strong that we can carry these acts
inside this tiny pubic Bermuda triangle
to our graves and beyond
to our daughters’ graves and beyond
slogging a lifetime through
Hey girls, why don’t you smile?
Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you act like you’re enjoying it?
and it will all be over
eventually
2.
Hormone means Messenger
Who will be my messenger now—
Just this chemical squirt from Walgreen’s?
All the messengers on their tiny bicycles
speeding from this brain
down that steep hill
they were never really going anywhere
never gonna meet anybody
Central switchboard smoking, telegraphing taps and spaces
what a lot of fucking work!
Will the loyal messengers abandon their bikes now
just a flesh garage full of twisted wheels, rusting pedals and gears
and no further communication?
Just an empty room, uninhabitable, but safe
while some receptors wait for communication
that will never come
for a mission
that was never wanted
Wait through this sunset time
taps blowing softly across the old pink sky
So
Farewell to all that tender infrastructure, patient and poised
going through convulsive replications and preparations
like the mechanics of a bowling lane
pins knocked down and set back up
tirelessly through strikes and spares
over and over
the ball sent back through mysterious subterranean tubes
on and on
like a pep-squad, like cheerleaders, like an army running laps
All that effort of purpose! All these years!
And so, nostalgia is the least that I can offer up
for invisible processes, for an empty rose room
And
maybe those laparoscopic hands will
belong to a female robot
who won’t mis-cut, mis-clamp or miss anything
or a pink-clad womyn’s volleyball team
spiking, diving, passing the balls, the eggs, the blade.
I walk the long lines of rigor
with a clipboard and a checklist
noting functions, wanting poetry like wings
to lift me out of this distant mystery, this body cavity
this echoing bowling alley, volleyball court, bike garage, train station
this stadium of pink clad gladiators
where womyn do push-ups on chairbacks
and jog round the morning track
3.
I write leaning this paper on my abdomen
trying not to think of 4 deep punctures
that will enter my gut like swords and
after the knife-fight that I’ll win
with my army of pink girl robots,
cheerleaders and volleyball champs
I can say
Farewell to the Red Energy
no rookery, no nest or bud, just
a different fertility, as it ever was in this body
Womb as sense organ
just Me,
beyond all lunar possibilities
simply this ruby-jeweled enclosure
With what will I replace that space?
Only give me power to express
how fertile I am, still
with myself
I fill me in with me
and then more
spreading in time
like the moon
as I replenish
that pearl
to full
again.
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