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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4296 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Shape-shifting (for Frida Kahlo) Lauriette (Laurie Byro) I crawl on my stomach, crossing the sea of chipped linoleum-- scales flaking off my back. Not blinder, human scales,. serpent’s scales, the scales of a fish that tempt sailors. “Snake child” they call me. I wag my ass at them-- the sky, the color of paint under my nails. I wag my ass at the moon grab my cheeks invite them in. They will say I curse spit, talk like a gypsy, fuck like a sailor: The honey of my ass a calla lily for their pleasure. They will say I honk and bray like a goose, my donkey buttocks under them while we ride the moon. I was fucked by a steel shaft, my first lover, a may-pole that shattered my pelvis, spilled my eggs, and left me broken on the curb. They didn’t shoot me like the dog which became my destiny, didn’t kill me before I became rabid, before I frothed and barked. You learn to crawl, learn to break eggs on your breasts to feel the coolness of the unborn, smear yolks on your nipples to comfort your empty shell. But the sailors are kind to me, kinder than Him. Sometimes I paint ivy, I paint brambles and roses on my skin, and he tells me : “It is the Demerol-- Addict”-- he calls me crazy. Those lovely, lonely men who use my ass but are kind--say I have been “away,” have had a sea change. I paint a flower around my navel, imagine myself a woman without scars, without this name “Pierre”. One sailor, a boy, who I tell about my babies, my unborn, never-to-be daughters, lets me cry at times. He puts his tongue in my belly and tells me how sweet my daughters will taste, how my belly will swell with them, how the flower I have painted around my navel will grow. And the moon wags back down at me, shows me His ass, his spread cheeks while I spit up at Him. For He is not real, He is my large crude canvass, created by me out of my morphine, crawling paintbrush. He may teach me how to bark, to bray, to spit. But He is my invention, and I am his. |
