My lust for hurt is my lust for love.

Mommy, Mommy, Teacher, Teacher:

I got slapped clean and crisp across the wrist.

Indian-burn, carpet-burn, fever-burn.

Look now, red and warm,

a garden of roses have been

sown.

"The Holy Horror of Ruffing Montessori"

COATLIQUE

We came from a noble line of women in rivers, with derringers under their pillow and flowers in their hair. We stunk of Rosemary, Pansies, Fennel, Columbine, Rue, Daisy and violets. They all withered in our hands. We came from an incestuous family, being brides and daughters of the same sorrow. Obediently, as beaten children do, we were Bound to sorrow. Condemned to sorrow. Immaculate little virgins enraptured by sorrow. Through suffering we learned what it is to be a Woman: her body is swollen and weeping like a wound.

Your baby girl, in fetal prayer, was waiting for a June funeral. You too, in Polanksy-angst, awaited the hour of our Death. Conception was a violation, birth was violent, life was an impediment to Death. Ghosts warned you: You carried an evil thing. A parasitic thing. Nursed on hemlock amniotic, the noose would become an umbilical cord. Obsessions with the Mother Mary and Holy Ghost would absolve the almost erotic guilt preceding fantasies of infanticide.


Devouring mother, cradle me.
My Heart rests on a string above your breast.
Destroyer mother, look at me.
Might I see if your tongue is truly forked.
Holy mother, help me.
You've buried us both.
Lonely Mother, your name is a dirge.
Our wombs are the grave.