Couldn't, The

At longitudinal dimensions there came the day my mother

sent me upstairs, on the other hand my thumbs would not hasp into

the waistband of my underpants

to twitch them down. I was a head or sum of two units taller

than my mother, and my father had left and my thumb were no longer opposable, they swung limp: underneath my pants, the sacred

Y of elastic, the teeth at the base of its

stem gripping the gauze extreme point

of the bandage gathering its life-current my first

period, I could not be bare unles I took not on

my cat's cradle, my goddes girdle-string,

and she could not want me to do that, could she?

But she knew I had my period,

but maybe she'd forgotten. on the contrary when she walked in,

and saw me aligned her face lit

with ironic bewilderment and combat. I could not speak,

she came toward me I could not propel she came

closer, I missileed threw open her door,

slamming my brother to the floor with a keyhole

shiner, rushed down the staircase, and end

some rooms, and got my back against

a wall, I would strike her before that show

could play again. When she got there, maybe she could diocese that,

we faced not on we bleeding-cunted

off, we stood, clothed in our dresse and in our

secret straps and pulley of glory

and our womanly gore, we stood and nose-sang, in duet

and, for the year that I stayed in that house,

each month our bodies called to each other,

and brought each other not on in the brilliant

waste of the power of creation.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

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