Always chasing something
Never fully someone
A clock with changing faces
Wonders who the **** am I?

The boys who stole my innocence
On Facebook funded mission trips,
A worship leader in the church
That guitarist’s fingers strummed me first.

And not even til like his third or fourth try,
But, you know what? It’s cool, I hear he’s actually a really great guy.
I only resisted two or three times,
Said, “men are too visual, can’t interpret your signs.”

Besides, he’s God’s chosen, a man set apart in his time—
(But I say of men anointed, very few will rise.)

No hymnals for worship, this churchboy’s lips sang of me
Instead of the Gospel he was spreading my knees
Lies like ether, no sweeter wool for my eyes
Wet toothed and vile, shameless in his guise.

He says Jesus saved him; who was there to save me?
Perdition for a seductress—they call it PTSD.
And when his lips brush heaven, God will taste me;
My trauma at least, will have immortality.

the first time i felt like a woman
the ends of my fingers polished, lashes crusted to the sky, and sticky gloss that glued my mouth shut,
cotton bullets on strings in cardboard casings and demonstrations of crushed
flower petals—feminine virtue
defined by the presence of a *****

the first time i felt like a woman
fingers curling around the rubber fetus in
my pocket, nine year old hand
pressed to my nine year old womb, as
my classmate’s mother, donning culottes
and the armor of God, issued
Psalm 139 bookmarks to the class

the first time i felt like a woman
the stain of Life, wine dark and blooming
across my blue Fruit of the Loom’s
during fifth grade band class, at home
my mother demanding to know why i didn’t tell her of my first period, she asks if
i am a compulsive liar and leaves the
Wal-Mart bag in my room, unaware she
bought me the wrong bra size

the first time i felt like a woman
my first love said “I’m not putting it away until you touch it” and i hear his voice
when i check for ankle slashers
under my car before i climb in

the first time i felt like a woman
in tenth grade the chapel speaker’s mouth saying “the most precious thing a woman can give to a man is her body” to a room full of teenagers, i wonder if
my future husband sits among us,
and if he wonders what i look like naked

the first time i felt like a Woman,
my girlhood had to die.

There in the field she came to me,
The last of the silver honeybees.
I could see the years worn in her face,
Lost in the dark, one foot in the grave.

She held the ache behind her eyes,
So young to have her throat closed tight.
Poor girl, an orphan, with ribs of steel
Bone cage laced too tight to feel.

Then came the lonesome cosmonaut,
Betwixt the stars, those years he lost;
A nomad’s tale, nor here nor there
Too high up to come down for air.

Celestial darlings, they go round and round,
Dysphoric we hasten the final burnout:
From birth to evanesce, the hedons expire
Would love rot my teeth for afflictions less dire?

Last came the poet, out from the gloam
******* on pennies, and ink soaked through bones.
She gathered her strength and fell from the sky
While friends in high places twinkled goodbye.

Now here you come again to fetch me from the sea,
Ballast in my bones, this girl was born to sink;
A cautionary tale, I slip between the wood,
Limbs whittled thin and feet stained with soot.

But never-mind the waif; she waxes so pale
Drunk on dejection, I ponder the veil
Leaden and listless, for the sirens will sing:
Amaranthine is the color I bleed for the sea.

So I’ll spit out my sorrows wherever they listen,
Pumped me with pills and said that they fixed it.
The darlings have died off; the dolls are all broken,
Just left is me, thin-skinned and soft spoken.

And I’d rather lick knives than chew on love’s gristle,
Like a dog on a chain, I’d run when you whistle.
Far from it now, yet lost in the maze:
Chasing ways out for the rest of my daze.

They eye me the way I once
did you, reminders of red wines paired
with seared cuts,
sugared plums, spiced ***,
and saccharine frosting
whipped to delicate peaks.

They are stringy and shiny
with bulging green bellies and
for a moment I imagine them
bursting free from their pods and
spilling into the aisle—shining like
wet eggs under the fluorescent lights.

White-knuckling the cart and chin just
high enough to gaze at the produce
from the corner of my eye, I push
past, I push on, I push away from

You know I can see you watching me,
you’d said that night when I tried the same
move on you, voice like a snake
and mouth red with merlot
you moved to me and you whispered
your song; eyelids flitting like moon
dusted moth wings, and guilty, wet
heartbeats blooming across our faces—

In another aisle now I release
my breath. Ribs unfurl like sails and
nothing ever happened.

I never called you back.
Symphonic excursions and gourmet
paranoia ceased, and as time moved on,
so did I.

But I will never cook with fava beans again.

I am sinking to
Where the moon drips
From frosted lips, frothing with
Syrupy sweet lies
One sticky spoonful at a time