Self-Portrait: Bullet, Prayer, Teeth
Manhattan, New York
.
The world wants us to see this—
girl in the ground. Girl
in the gutter—lover, lamplight
.
sifting through gum trees.
The soft, slow smell of fat. White down
poking through the seams. Necked
.
down to a bullet, girl: a cold
and visual math.
And so we take heed—we let our fur
.
grow out, let the simmer of eyes take
hold—later, we’re taken. Girls turn and turn
away. Chameleon, we leap like girls
.
into newsprint: green, ultraviolet. If only
the man they question would speak more
than two truths. To stoop over the sink, to be
.
dawned like a pear, white-bellied. To wring
our necks: the drain rimmed with prayers, pure
as hands. To dream, by morning, of nothing
.
but the fruit—stained
from newsprint skin—which leaves
full words across his teeth.