From The Diaries Of A Girl Born In Brothel, Next In Line

From The Diaries Of A Girl Born In Brothel, Next in line

I am next in line

Wrapping the age nine

Around my chest—

 

Bracing to stitch blisters

Between my thighs, twigs

Bathed in kerosene

 

More than once, maybe

Twice? Or is it

His scalding machismo

 

Thick tickling slime

Gushing through the nozzle?

I do not know.

 

I am only nine and need

Not know but go

With it and fly my kite,

 

Prick-peel the pus

And wiggle my toes

When the pain grows,

 

Pretend my skirt is

A little too tight,

And chomp on my nails

 

When I can't scream at night

But I won't ask why

I am next in line

 

Sipping mama's stink,

Scooping lather off her

Skin so supple so sore

 

Biting into the pillow,

And woo the gore

Of nuzzling a swarm of cells

 

Of licking a door!

That cracker lit and charred--

I must be, and thrust my body

 

Into the warm troughs

Left behind, from a season's grind

Of her bed bound pelvis.

 

So I slide in a petticoat

And blouse, pluck all the hooks out

And tug hard at the seams.

 

Is this really what it means

To be a woman—

Fork flipping on a plate?

 

I am now a woman it seems,

Scribble, Scratch, Replace.

I am woman. I am a sl-u--ate !

 

Am I a goddess already?

Teal-tinctured dough crucified,

Wide-eyed, plastered on a sheet?

 

Gargoyles come, they come

Groveling to my feet

And go gratified and come again

 

I listen, I act, I grant.

For it's the law in the playpen

Of chronic sinners—so undivine!

 

I age in the dark, scrunching

In space, leaping in time

I may have gained another nine.

 

The halo is gone.The child is dead.

The goblin eyes have multiplied.

I've gagged; I've bled.

 

And the feast is on

Till the break of dawn.

Then the zipping unzipping

 

Greet my ear.

Alas, do I belong here?

I am nine—so what?

 

I do not understand dreams.

I sack them in my bladder and hiss.

They plop in the sewer and die.

 

And yet I wish, I wish if I

Were a storm of life

Lapping free—like Nature

 

Born anew—her womb and will

Fused in one tale, a whole,

Not once infringed,

 

Not once incised. A full breadth

Of being. Not crumbs flecked

On Forceps and pipes.