Yesterday, 08:14 AM
Thanks to all who left feedback; here is my latest revision as of 5/31.
On Impulse
Little girls learn rape at school & survival
at home. They learn to scrape them,
so their DNA is under your fingernails.
They learn to smile with the eyes & with
the legs, to run; to absorb the juice
of strawberries, the naked yellow
seeds that look like raw polenta, & the sun
that ripens them until they fill with sweetness
men would kill to taste, & have. They memorize
the lessons of a mother who remembers
how it feels to be in someone else’s mouth &
have somebody else in yours & to be waiting
one way or another for it all to end.
But school & home live under glass, which is
after all a window: she looks out at the world
& sees everything alive, the redwoods coughing
up a squirrel every thirty seconds, & the hose left
prostrate on the lawn, crying its last regrets into a
creeping patch of brown. How to feel unsafe
in such a papier-mâché world? It looks so small
& brittle, so delicate & wild. It’s all anyone can do
not to reach out & touch.
On Impulse
Little girls learn rape at school & survival
at home. They learn to scrape them,
so their DNA is under your fingernails.
They learn to smile with the eyes & with
the legs, to run; to absorb the juice
of strawberries, the naked yellow
seeds that look like raw polenta, & the sun
that ripens them until they fill with sweetness
men would kill to taste, & have. They memorize
the lessons of a mother who remembers
how it feels to be in someone else’s mouth &
have somebody else in yours & to be waiting
one way or another for it all to end.
But school & home live under glass, which is
after all a window: she looks out at the world
& sees everything alive, the redwoods coughing
up a squirrel every thirty seconds, & the hose left
prostrate on the lawn, crying its last regrets into a
creeping patch of brown. How to feel unsafe
in such a papier-mâché world? It looks so small
& brittle, so delicate & wild. It’s all anyone can do
not to reach out & touch.