I don't want to love you the way you love me

Instead be gold leaf on the tip

of an earlobe like Sam Smith

and the world ends and summer

ends again feeling

To drop the holy host after a dance

and buy nothing but lip balm at the

church bazaar sale when at midnight

the mood swing drowns me whole

seven months before the first birth

fathering and then bar hops

with absent fathers under fat moons

and I wish I could tell you I have

something left after thousands of

dollars spent on manicures in

unlicensed salons because you liked

the way my hand looked when I

touched your dick

weren't you curious about

what it felt like to be touched by

an Angel like Dante

when he drew seven P's on my

forehead with a sword and said

"when you are inside be sure to

wash these wounds away"

I pray again and often for young mothers

whose babies suckle under hoop skirts

smeared with mauve tinted blush

the holy anastasia of whatever

what more could my unwed

ephemeral sacrifice be but to go

hard from the crying room and

relieve this urge to be a trope

the women are eating tadpoles now

to warn off winter or fashion week

a new diet of starvation in preparation

for skorts or pregnancy you laughed

there is that gal in white after labor day

invincible to treacherous male haunts

pulling eyelash glue out of her eyes

after it melted under Orlando sun

she wasn't the type to make out

with her brother's friends

But still the Irish cross won't protect

you girl and the angel might stop calling

and even block your number it's easy

now like pool boys in Bermuda shorts

near Upstate New York like

drinking maroon water ice and

ignoring guests requests for refills

I can ignore too the work of the poem

or your shooter fantasies how they

fill wounds before the newscasts

verify the fears of 21st-century

children on their knees and we

can talk trauma that kept us out

of the Ivy League and crippled us

mediocre in all these important ways

You like when I am mediocre

You say put your cheer skirt on

cup your breasts, pudding pop

stop causing trouble

and Googling Kim K.

stop talking about your baby brother

or how you are afraid to leave the house

stop saying you are fat and then eating

and stop leaving tampons in the pool

or crying openly in feminist theory

seminars being like

it is so hard to be a girl

and all my problems

come from the belief that I can love

only if I'm straddling you

and you are disinterested dead

and pale blue

wide feet in heels,

a busted fake flaneur

swept floors

as if someone will be coming

over soon

arguing in Disqus online forums until

I get what I need to hear

we learn only women can love

in a holistic sense just like a

lazy susan filled with candies

for visitors a girl's heart

my heart

is fast and ready and open

for you to aim shoot and kill

Structure

88 lines · 47 stanzas