An Aside

Monday, January 16, 2012

Girls peeling skin, peeling splinters back, making origami
          of each other’s faces, girls rug-burned and face-planted,
girls with blood under their nails, girls biting boys
           on the playground, whitening their knuckles, girls hiding
by fences, in the bleachers, under sheets, girls
                      eraser-burning their wrists. It was always the girls,
           snapped-elastic and shoulder welts, graphite under skin,
                      split-chin and stitched three times, girls poisoning pet snails
           with nail polish, girls dragging girls across haylofts
                      & digging their feet in, probing dead mice
           behind the farmhouse, girls whitewashed & clapboarded,
                                 bobby-pin stabbed & decidedly. Little girls
                      with red tongues, teeth wired, sweaty & shoving quieter girls
                                 under bus seats, girls faking their own adoptions,
                      tearing leaves, deveining everything in the schoolyard,
                                 girls gouging each other with tweezers, with heels,
                      girls I knew all of you and now—

Sunday, January 1, 2012