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DEDICATION
To the rogue lions
that chose the wild
and for River (Vita),
my lioness,
for leading me back
to the pride.
“I know hope—it is in spite of all I know of men or death or me.”
Erica Jong
At the Edge of the Body
I AM A LIONESS running out of lives. I need the fingers from both hands now to count how many times I’ve died, and almost all have been at the teeth of lions. But not one hurt more than not being protected by one of my own.
A lioness forced to fight lions as a cub survives only by becoming a lion herself—becoming to herself the father she wished she’d had to protect her. But slowly, as time passes and healing begins, her survival-mane starts to fall out one strand of hair at a time as she learns to shed her aggression, her fight, her masculinity, her lion, to live again as the lioness she was born to be. Learning that her softness is not weakness. Learning to make love again, not war, and knowing the difference.
PREY
LIABILITY
I’m afraid I have attracted
more moths than flowers with this light.
PARANOID
They tell me
I’m being paranoid
but I am convinced
a woman gave me life
and men
have been trying
to kill me
ever since.
DEBT
They tell me
I am beautiful
then stand there
waiting
as though
it owes them
something.
SPORT
When you look like a kill,
all Bambi legs
and deer-in-the-headlights stare,
you look like you’re game
whether you are
ready
or not.
HEADS OR TAILS
I am like a coin
they flip
from my back
to my stomach.
On one side
I am love,
the other
I am war.
PRESENT
It was like
looking at the sea
and being told
it was green
the way they
wrapped up hate
in pretty paper
and called it
love.
ARMOR
I look in the mirror
armed with my soldiers
of lipstick and mascara
with only one mission
in mind:
How to look less dead.
TEENAGE HEROES
I think back sometimes
to those boys at school
I let them put their hands up my skirt
for a cheap thrill
while I chewed gum
and looked the other way
like it was no big deal
because I was dying at home
and truth be told
all those boys at school
with a spare fifteen minutes
to hold me, saved me.
QUICK FIXES
I pop men
like pills
to make me happy,
but they all
wear off
in the end.
LESS
You didn’t owe me
anything more
because I took off
my clothes for you,
but I need you to know
that you didn’t owe me
any less either.
WITCH HUNT
Those same fingers that
stroked me tenderly in the
night, from my neck down to
the small of my back, are
pulling me apart this
morning. In a frantic witch
hunt through the dark
forest of my bones; firing
arrows into the soft, fleshy
meat of my heart, where he
wants to cut out all the men
that came before him; his
palm, open and waiting, is
demanding I spit out their
Who were they? How many?
His hands wave at my chest,
searching for the guest
book.
Who came before you? I repeat,
taking one step forward,
unflinching, my eyes cold
and hard like bullets and
shoot him down. Love did.
DIFFERENT
You shift in your seat
to get comfortable.
I shift in my skin.
Please don’t tell me we are the same.
D.O.A
Men hurt me before I had the chance to love one.
BROKEN HOME
I spent hours
on my knees
as a child
making dollhouses
out of cardboard boxes
gluing together
scraps of cloth
to make blankets
to keep them warm
and not once
did I make one
of my dolls cry
or make one scared
to fall asleep
in her own bed—
don’t tell me I was
too young to know
any different.
I was born with
the meaning of home
running through
my veins.
DECONSTRUCT
You are not
a child anymore.
You should know better
than to pull
a woman apart
just to see how she works.
INVADED
I was peace
and you brought war.
I’d never had a man
call it love before.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Sometimes we are just the collateral damage
in someone else’s war against themselves.
ROAM
We are the ones who found
more peace in the wild—
fugitive lionesses
roaming without prides
tough and beaten
not scared of the streets
not when we felt
that much fear at home.
CRIMINALS
I couldn’t tell you the names
of everyone I’ve loved—
they are a blur of giddiness—
but I could pick out
the face of every single
person who’s hurt me
in a lineup.
EDITS
It wasn’t until I could
read my own fairytales
that I knew my mother
had been lying.
I know she’d edited out
that big bad wolf.
MASOCHISM
Loving you became just
a different way to hate myself.
CLARITY
You told me
you would protect me
always
not understanding
that mostly
it would mean
protecting me
from you.
SWALLOW
I’ve been bitten too many times
by the men with golden tongues
hissing pretty words in my ear
like snakes
urging me to take a bite
but I have lost my appetite
for Adam’s apple—
a throat
bulging with tiny
black seeds of cyanide
like lies
not even he
can swallow.
ADRIFT
I lost myself in men
like they were the ocean
and I was adrift.
That is what happens
when a siren loses
her voice.
PRIZE
To live life through the flesh
is to submit to the hunter.
MAGICIAN
For my final trick
I show you my skin
and watch you
disappear
by morning.
DARK CIRCLES
I like to keep my darkness close
right under
my eyes
stalking my face
just out of
sight.
YOUNG
They’re all looking for
someone to grow old with
and I am looking for the one
who can make me feel
like a child again.
DAMAGED
A man almost destroyed me
so I chose the next one
so hellbent on destroying himself
he wouldn’t have the strength
to hurt me.
It was then I learned
of collateral damage.
PUNCH-DRUNK
Love was you
sitting in the armchair
a bottle in one hand
cigarette in the other
and I on your lap
wishing you
would hold me.
BRUISES
He lives rough. His days are
not so gentle on me, like
splintered wood rubbing
against silk. It hurts. It
hurts to see the way he
drinks like a fish and still
drowns. Hands shaking in
his lap. Words like gentle
homicides. But when he
loves, he is delicate. You
should see the flowers
unfold like paper. They are
as in love with him as I
am—their love is written
all over their petals, and
mine on my face.
He kisses like the wind. His
hands, like birds in my
hair. He moves inside me
like a prayer; rolling over
afterwards like he’s lost
faith the moment I get up to
open the window. He thinks
I’m going to fly away again,
but I’m just trying to
breathe. He’s hard to
breathe in. He tastes like
cigarettes and death—a slow
suicide I can’t look away
from.
And I leave with bruises.
Purple orbs from my arms
too tight across my chest
trying not to revolve my
whole world around him; my
flight pattern marked upon
my arms like track marks.
This is no joy ride, my
kamikaze pilot, my bomb;
always going off to war
with you.
SAFE
He’d always ask me
if I felt safe with him
so many times
I began to question
why he so badly
needed to hear it.
TRAMPLED
O maiden moon
how the men walked all over you
just to prove
that they could.
REVENGE
I prey on married men
who remind me of my father
with wives
who look like
the woman
who took him away
from me
splitting them apart
in carefully considered ways—
ways I was never considered.
WHITE KNIGHTS
My biggest fright was finding out
that even the men who were good
were not always good.
I’d been looking for the men
with sharp teeth and narrowed eyes
looking at me like a meal.
I didn’t know that it was the men
with hands gentler than my own
with voice boxes filled with honey
men who sharpened
their knives on diamonds
and fed me little white lies
that tasted like sugar going down—
that these would be the men
who would hurt me most.
TANGLED
I wonder of other women. How
they might untangle their
bodies softly from their
lovers’ after they make
love, delicately, like
unknotting two necklaces
twisted together in a
jewelry box. Women who let
a man linger a little longer
inside them, like a hand
pausing mid-air in
farewell.
I wonder of women like me.
Women who rip their bodies
away quickly afterward,
like a band-aid covering a
wound he thought he could
kiss all better (the wound
that never gets better).
Women who snatch
themselves away angrily
like a child who doesn’t
want to share herself
anymore. Women who roll out
of a man’s arms as
naturally as other women
roll in; their eyes fixed
dreamily on his chest while
ours stare idly at the wall,
fixed, as the rest of us lies
broken.
WANT
Some days it hurts
and I need to remember this
on the days that it doesn’t.
Remember
to protect my thin skin
on the days I wear mine
thick like armor.
Remember
that on the nights
he feels like a vacation
he will feel like an abandoned house
in the morning.
Remember
that on the days
I am stuck in his honey
I will wake in the morning
eyes stinging
from wanting him.
Remember
that he only wants me
some of the time
when I’ve only
ever wanted him
always.
MUTUAL
I kissed a man’s neck last night
for the first time in as long as
I can remember
and I thought
finally
after all this time
I am beginning
to see sex
as something I do
and not something
that is done to me.
TOGETHER
He came to me
&n
bsp; with his hands deep
inside his pockets
ashamed
of the dirt hidden
behind his fingernails
and I held them in mine
palm
to palm
and with the warmth
we made
he grew flowers.
FIX
There’s a theory that says
if you don’t fix a broken window
within a couple of days
you will invite vandals
and if people work
in the same way
then I’ve only got
one more day
to get over you.
CAPTIVITY
STARVED
When you are not fed love on a silver spoon
you learn to lick it off knives.
FIRST
I feel his mouth
closing in.
I lick my lips quickly
to get to me first.
TOO CLOSE
It was your breath
warm and beating
on the back of my neck
erupting my skin
in a shiver
that I now recognize
as a reaction of fear—
you
standing too close
for me to breathe.
OPEN
I envy birds
how their home
has no ceiling
how they never
outgrow their lives
never bump their heads
never stoop
never crouch
never fold up smaller
to fit through doors
the world insists
they walk through.
TINY
I cannot fathom
how I could ever
have shrunk
so small to live
in the palm of
a hand.
CHASE
I’m afraid that he could have
the warmest hands