I can channel my hate into self caring until death
Reading my own birth chart
burrowing into my own psyche like wrapping up in warm unwashed bed clothes
Worming for clues deposited there at my birth
Diving into my own grease slick pores where my secrets live
Spreading out like a spatula under my own skin and
trying to heave it off so I can feel peeled and clean
Capping the ugly raw bones at the ends of my fingers
with my own teeth pulled out of my own
sick sweet watermelon head and
filing those teeth into a long coffin
wherein I will bury the usefulness of my soft white hands

I am doing this because I Command that you look at me Exactly Right
Without pitying me or ******* me I want you to look and NEVER touch me
You must Never read my birth chart or sleep in my bed or extract my pores or else
I will fall apart in a way that will definitely **** you
Then you must also understand that your memories of looking
belong to me
I have given you license to use my face just once in just one way
I have signed myself away to you as a sweet madonna dressed in rhinestones
Like how parents sign waivers allowing their children to appear in commercials
Now you are under a contractual obligation to Never Ever Ever
******* talk about me unless I am present to modulate
your present perception of your past experiences and
nudge you
into the correct opinion so that you may Love Me and
Make other people Love Me
And if you don't love me immediately after meeting me then
I am probably going to climb into your window tonight, ******

I turn my face away from her in disgust for months at a time
And lock her away from the world and the things that please her
And starve in congress with her and deny our
dual
parallel
identical
Suffering
I forget she exists while I live out uncounted days that
Blend one into the other and when she screams
I wake in a panicked sweat already mouthing her curses and
Swallowing her yellow teeth and red tongue

I know her like the parent knows the feral nonverbal child
And the torturer knows the captive in his walk-in closet
And the scientist knows the rats that starve under his intern's care
She has never quite escaped my notice for even a day but
I spend all my time pretending she could

What hope does an animal without speech have among the living
What war criminal could ever face society's open arms and hearts
The mortifying ordeal has mortified far beyond the flesh and
Reached the mind and spirit too until the whole carcass
Turned gray like a steak under supermarket lights

Oh little pair of legs splayed out from beneath the house
I could pick up your sad white bones and hug them as they flopped
Brokenly
In my embrace like a wooden puppet

I know you would turn around and bite me
“But I helped you” the Anasazi warrior protested
“Ah, yes, but it is my nature” replied the snake
And I would die at peace with that knowledge
And forgive you over and over

What will I become in some time
Beyond your little pair of legs under the house
your little hand in the attic holding a powdered donut
The rope that dangles over the washed-out creek

Poor little broken snake that bites me
Poor little ghost that possessed my old porcelain doll
You ain't vicious in any way that don't come natural
You know the terror I became mourning those legs
You know who left your sticky little hands behind in the attic
You're a child forever and you know very well that
It's a warrior that the snake bites

Bury me under the chokecherry tree
Then they won't forget how and who I was
When life is done retching and spitting me out
Plant me with the kindred roots like a little cyanide seed
A hard and bitter pill in the wet black maw of the earth
Remind the little children
Of the red ridged fingertips that pressed my taut skin
They gauged that I was valuable and ripe
And bruised me

I lost my mind at Lascaux
Where I spied the red ochre handprints and understood
Why trace the arc of an arrow through the sky in red
Unless you understand that when the shaking hand misses the mark
Dry mouths at home will cry out in hunger
A hart makes no expression when its life is spared

When his wife came home sick, he said
"This isn't her."
And together with kin and neighbors,
He sought to beat the fairy out of his home.
He burnt her in the fire.
He wrapped the black fairy in a sheet and threw it in the river.
They found him in the church, whispering,
"It won't be long now.
It won't be long."
Before the altar, he had knelt
And pressed his soot-caked hands to the floor.

Strong dose, that girl
Taken on a spoon and you'll fall
Writhing to be the first to apologize at her skirts
Confessing sins known and unknown
Screaming them half-mad in the night
As the sweat drenches your sheets

Did the spoon clear those sins from your lungs
Did she build them up there
Brick by brick in the bronchi

You dream of her standing impassive
In the midst of the bacchanal
Object to be worshipped
Effigy to be burned
Single sane survivor in the whirlwind of tarantism
She engineers such hurricanes

Hair shines down from the cloud-pale face
Solid bars of sunlight through a hole in the sky
The palpable yellow beams of God's arms
As her fingers pluck the wind to send it roiling

I think that now I may contain multitudes
Single white faces looking out from a million crowds
Laughing too loud with their red lips in the supermarket
And crying ostentatiously with their red eyes at funerals
You can find them wherever they don't belong
Touching what isn't theirs with the stubby-fingered little hands of a million women
Shamanesses and coed girls and trailer trash making scenes in public
Bratty shoplifting teenagers
And actresses fainting over velvet couches
And mothers to children who never asked to be adopted
Sometimes just a pair of ******* leaning over a table
Sometimes just an *** crack and a crotch
Being touched and prodded by a million stupid blind hands
I am so full I can feel white arms and tanned arms
Pulling and pushing me from the inside
Reaching out to the eyes that called them forth
I asked for some of them to live and take on some responsibility for me and
A smart pretty robot with good posture and a big smile did what I asked but
Others were pasted over my face while I screamed that I could not breathe and
A vapid ugly fat hag held me down and smiled at my pain with her heavy features
I think that I remember once being only one girl
She was simple and she lived alone in the dark mostly playing with dolls
I think that now, though, I may contain multitudes