I am butter
I am lonely
I am raw
I will never
Know love
I have
A
Flavor of
Rage
That has a
Curdle
Pyre
Circling my dreams
Haunting my
Life
I could never marry
I could never birth a
Life
All my
Ephemera
Is so scary
Inside me
It’s like
See
When I vomit
My dirty plate
Without having ever
Swallowed it
Things just
Reach down
And eat me
Instead
All backward
They touch my skin
My leg,
My most
Potent
Pet
And can just
Tell
But I really think
Why do I need a
Husband or
A child
When I have my hands
My feet
How they make my home
How they know how to sift
And cross link
Planks
How they made the chair I sit in
How they comb my hair
Plush
How they feel my
Blankets
My
Blankets
Are not
Threadbare
They have rose hip
They have brain
They have a Malcolm
They
Sing
Looooouuuddddd
They were my
Sheathe
Back in childhood
When I could not
Breathe
When I had a struggle
To wonder
Back when mom
Was made of clay
And couldn’t walk
Without chipping, without
Gritting
Her tongue
All on
Her wrist
And the other girls
Look at me
As if I’m stupid
And like poor you
Your pancake face
Must be
Itchy without
Syrup
You must have
Dollop eyes
And they must sing
In four four
Like Teflon crumb
All the
Time
And they ask
If I like
Myself a bit
Too much
Call my smile
Fish
That it must wrangle
Whales to
Have them
Read to me
In
Cerulean
Church
In their
Echoing
Glottal
Gotted
I say
With
Isaac
I am never
Lonely
My
Snake
How he
Razors
How he’s
Not a python
But a ligament
But a saloon sailor
He’s slinky around my
Neck
Hanger
He chokes me
As we waltz together
Across my room
Mashing my cereal
Into grainy
Bird food
Munning on my
Girl dolls
And sometimes he bites
And sometimes the choke
Is risen
But it can just be paid for
In the Tedelem
Body
In the
Orion
Machine
In the
Paven
Petal
And I know it is just like that
With their man
Just as
Blasphemous
So
I have always been struck by poor-made puppets
Always saw them smile a
Little
At me
So I am not in love with anything
Can’t let anything get too quick
Could never get a man like Isaac
So I just let things be be be
I am a woman who is well pass the marrying age, who is well into menopause. Why do i need a
child when i have my two good feet and hands and how they weld my home. They make the
chair i sit in. they made the table and the foundation of this house. I am the only woman in my
town who has not wed. Ladies ask me if i get lonely sometimes. They ask me what I do all day.
They ask me if I am in love with myself.
I say i read all day. I say I make furniture, i do yard work. I say no i am not lonely. Why do i
need a man when I have my pet snake? I tell them how sometimes he curls around my neck like
a slinky, until the curl becomes a choke, and soon turns into a bite that can be payed for in the
unraveling of the body, and isn’t that what sex with their man is like? They shake their heads no,
but i know behind their bedroom doors, it is all that same violent ritual.
I say no, i am not in love with anything. I do not let anything be my lover. I just let things be.
And i then i say i know that you say men are good for survival. you say that men give you a
reason to live. But I live not out of reason or love but out of spite.
But I make the money. I cook the food. I pay my own bills. I am an old woman. I am a deeply
and happily alone.
WILDsound Writing Festival 