

so he took her like an animal
but my father’s ghost wept
so she went to the men
like a good American
good people don’t want to believe
in visionaries good or bad
especially when you have red clay mud
starved stabbed scabbed over and over
on your grandmother’s dress from being raped just like her
from ft. Sumter to Wounded Knee
he’d never seen that color red come out of a living fertility statue
my veil is torn
the dog is dead
the natives have resumed their drumbeat
They
will sell you
candy cigarettes,
insulin,
Camel Wides,
chemotherapy,
God,
nicotine patches,
life insurance,
and a bronze casket
all
in one lifetime.
a woman’s life
is too tenuous
delicate
billowy
spider web
close call on I-75
in preterm labor
on the way to the
Paris airport
in the rain
fragile
beautiful
precious
sacrosanct
finite
for bad friends
bad family
bad coffee
bad shoes
bad mattresses
bad jobs
bad husbands
bad debt
and bad dick
learn this by 30 for maximum
enjoyment
future
female
conquerors
of a dying planet
the true measure
of a civilized society
are the rumors
told by its ghosts
every night you were away
i sought you out
through blackberry bramble ether
from weeping constellations above dixmyth avenue
to jessamine county barns filled with horse hay
perpetually wrapping blue ribbon around my finger
whispering vespers
my plea to the particles of the universe
to hold you together
to bring you back from oblivion
as you had done for me
you are my chosen family
inextricably part
of my thunderous heart
to which you will always hold the latchkey
when a sociopath
says i love you
what they’re actually saying is
that it pleases them
to inflict their twisted personality
upon you regardless of your desires
that they will do so at their leisure
until one
or both of you
is dead
yet they are too sick in the mind
to see it that way
not able to smell their flowers
reek of decay