4 hours ago
On Credibility
Little girls learn rape. They get it
at school & at home. They learn
to scrape them, so their DNA is
under your fingernails. They learn
to smile with the eyes & with the
legs, to run. They learn how to absorb
the juice of strawberries, the naked
yellow seeds that look like raw
polenta, & the sun that ripens
them until they fill with sweetness men
would kill to taste, & have, & the
lessons of a mother who remembers
how it feels to be a piece of fruit in
someone else’s mouth.
Prepared as such they gaze out
through the windows at the world
with big big eyes, confused about its
status. Everything’s alive, the trees
cough up a squirrel every thirty seconds,
& the hose is prostrate on the lawn,
crying its last regrets into a creeping patch
of brown. How to feel unsafe in such a
papier-mâché world? It looks so small
and brittle. One imagines it would break
into a million shards if touched.
Little girls learn rape. They get it
at school & at home. They learn
to scrape them, so their DNA is
under your fingernails. They learn
to smile with the eyes & with the
legs, to run. They learn how to absorb
the juice of strawberries, the naked
yellow seeds that look like raw
polenta, & the sun that ripens
them until they fill with sweetness men
would kill to taste, & have, & the
lessons of a mother who remembers
how it feels to be a piece of fruit in
someone else’s mouth.
Prepared as such they gaze out
through the windows at the world
with big big eyes, confused about its
status. Everything’s alive, the trees
cough up a squirrel every thirty seconds,
& the hose is prostrate on the lawn,
crying its last regrets into a creeping patch
of brown. How to feel unsafe in such a
papier-mâché world? It looks so small
and brittle. One imagines it would break
into a million shards if touched.