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Allow him to do it again, I will
Not put up with this anymore
I will leave if it ever happensAgain, and if he ever does that
Again, I will shoot the mother.
I’d like to stick a blade through
His thing and let his balls fallOut; I’d cook ‘em in oil and eat ‘em.
The morning of March 23rd
They found her body spread eagle
On the bed, her abdomen stabbedTwenty-six times, part of her entrails
Were pushed out through her
Vagina, and there was a furry white
Bear stuffed into her mouth, suffusedWith blood; it was her son’s bear.

Are gorgeous in the half light,
The foregrounded twisty stair
Emphasizes the potential energyOf the descent into the lower darkness.
There is a Matisse-like block painting
Of an elephant on the wall just below
Her, the whole scene feels like the cornerOf an atrium in a museum or aquarium
At night, when only the guards and fishes
Fill the space with their silence.
But instead it’s a house at night.And she stands in the upper light,
Her face half lit, half darkened
As she contemplates the sounds
Emanating from her kitchen.

A hat on her head and a drink in her hand
Three ashtrays on the low coffee table
And an African statue in the backReminiscent of the racist depictions
In Antonioni when Monica Vitti dances
In blackface with a spear; and the same thing
In Fellini in the club with Mastroianni.
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– yeah, this bitch is in a 1940s scene,
She’s about to get popped.
There’s a scary, hairy guyOff screen; he’s gonna stick it to her,
And leave her body hanging half off the couch,
Feeding blood into the white carpet

An old Mexican church, all white
With the lady in black out front;
Two lampposts as sentinels,
And three crosses on top.Perhaps this is New Mexico,
Taos, or the road to Taos,
Where a church just like this one
Sits next to the road and a bookstore.We passed it on the way
To the town where D.H. Lawrence
Is supposed to be buried.
But the story goes that his ashes were tossedIn the ocean and replaced by other ashes.
During Easy Rider Jack and Dennis went
To his grave to be blessed, they took acid
And knew that humans were just insects.The next day they made history on film.

Behind the curtains
And I want to think
Los Angeles in the day.Her angular figure in white
Underclothes, or maybe
It’s a dress, it’s hard to tell,
She’s in silhouetteAgainst the glowing backlight.
How many times have you laid
On a bed and watched such a
Beauty dress in the morningAnd thought you were blessed,
As if the sun were conspiring
With you and all these affairs
Were scenes in the movie of your life.

More like a maid, for a well-off family
On the upper west side.
The son had pinned his younger sister,
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Held her screams and raped her.
Later, the mother didn’t listen
To the story, the daughter was ostracized.She became a writer for children.
The maid stayed on
For one more dark year.
The son killed himself,The other daughter became a hooker.
The maid lived near the Brooklyn Bridge;
For six months she met a man each Monday
At lunch in a stone park; her day off.

Had become silly, or faded into jail,
Or death from needle drugs – two
To suicide – but she kept the bootsThat she wore in high school
The nine-holed ones she bought
In a period of rebellion and self
Definition that she still held ontoAs a solid point of reference for who
She might still be, albeit one that was fading
Amidst the tall architecture of New York
And the featureless avenuesOf her working-girl life. She looked back,
The boy with the Mohawk had called
To her, it sounded like “Samson showser.”
“What?” but the group he was with laughedAnd moved on, leaving her on the cement stair.

From Nights of Cabiria,
Obviously not Fellini’s wife
The lovely clown,But one of the others
Whose story isn’t told,
Who fades into the dark
After Juliet Massina goes offWith the handsome guy
And sneaks around the mansion
With the stairwell
Full of dogs.Whores are romanticized
But what we should really see
Is how many men they are with
Each night; follow just one of them
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In her busty t-shirt,
Her pale Bosnian skin
Bursting from the blacknessOf her hair and surroundings,
Her mouth slightly slack
To let us know that she knows
She is young, sexy and hungry;But also vulnerable as a retard,
Dependent on the guidance
Of her guardian, me.
She is both vamp and idiot,Loud and soft, a crying simpleton
That can turn into a raging gibbon;
There is nothing better than cradling
Her solid Mediterranean breastsAnd knowing she could eat my soul

I slipped and hit a doorknob, I swear.
Jim? He didn’t do anything, I bruise
Easily and we were having sexAnd you know how it is
When you’re passionate,
Well Jim is passionate
And I’m his only source of pleasure.It gets so damn hard working
At the factory, how can you blame
Him for coming home and wanting
More than just me and television?Jim had big plans for life, I know
And I know me and the baby
Were not exactly part of those plans
So I can’t blame him for anything, really.

While lying on those black sheets?
Mia Wallace with her pulp fiction
Fifteen years before Pulp Fiction.She’s got nothing on but a white shirt
And panties so we can see the whole leg.
On the book there is a black haired vamp
In a nightgown, which is this girl all dressed up.
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Her head is cocked away from us
So it’s hard to connect intellectually.
Instead the picture is all ass;Everything from the contrast of the light body
On dark sheets to her positioning at the center
Of the photo make us focus on the spot
Where leg meets leg meets vag.

Oh, I see. G’wan ahead
I dun worked for my bread
Fur my house, fur my kids.If you think thas easy
Or fun or anything glam’rus,
Ya’ll is wrong. But if ya’ll
Think I’z just anothaLoafin’ welfare thang,
Feedin’ dem kids wif food-
Stamps an’ scraps
Ya’ll wrong. Dem kidsIs well brought up,
Healty and happy.
My boy ain’t raped ‘n’ killed
No twelve year old, he ain’tBut fifteen hisself, sheeeit.

It’s where the fags hang out
And fuck each other and tan.
It’s where Gordon Matta-ClarkCut that crescent in the side
Of that building. The boards
Were loose on the docks
And people would fall through.Sometimes bodies bobbed
Along the surface;
It’s where HIV festered
And spread and gay loveDied. Sometimes I think
I’d be happier as a man,
It’d be nice to go to a club
Where everyone was on the same teamAnd you could fuck all comers.

Of grandmother’s old Ohio mansion,
The mansion with the small statues
Out front: red lion and a white dog.
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When he was young my uncle
Burned it half down when he
Threw a book of lit matchesIn a closet and shut the door.
In the basement cellar the dankness
Was earthy, the washing machine
And dryer kept things musty.There was a pool table
With tons of tears in the felt;
We’d play and drink root beers.
When my parents were young,Their cat, Stoney, got lost down there.

I knew it was coming,
Like a hurricane warning,
Your temper was boilingOn the horizon, even when I met you.
Clouds behind the sun.
See, I’m the star of a one woman,
Multi-man variety show:A clown show with drama,
Laughs, and a lot of action.
Because I always pick wrong
–Or they pick me, like a casting call
Gone to shit. It always happens.So, I’ll just sit here; no more
Trying to weather the storm;
I’ll close my eyes
And make a wish,One, two, three.

In white. We had to send her away
Because she was doing bad things
To herself, sticking barrettes inside . . .She got shock therapy at a young
Young age and it drove her deeper
Inside, a voice within an echo chamber
– Goddamn, it must be miserableLiving inside one’s skull and body
Unable to communicate with the outside.
Are we all artists or is a bunch just
Crazy and another bunch just boring?Tennessee Williams’s sister Rose
Went nuts and was lobotomized
And Tenn put such material into his work.
Did he disrespect her or help us all
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The sex-crazed madwoman
Has escaped from the asylum
And she is standing in the hall.She holds herself a bit like Nina,
My actress friend from NYU
Whose parents escaped from Bosnia
To Windsor, Canada and paidFor her school by working hard.
Nina has the spirit of a crazy girl
Trapped in a shell of a shy girl.
This is her if she was pushed beyondHer limits, if she didn’t get everything
Her pop culture, neo riot girl, punk rocker
Sensibility desired and demanded.
She wants to be Meryl Streep, Patti Smith,Marlon Brando, Kurt Cobain, Marina Abromavic.

She felt a shudder and thought
Maybe that was a message
Meant just for her, that her lifeWas meant to make a mark
On this earth. But she was a girl
In the factory, the biggest mark
She might make would be loveWith the boss’s son, or a son
Of her own, who would grow.
She always wore colorful prints
Because it allowed her to stand apartFrom the drab brick fronts
And the factory dust
And the smoke from the chimneys
And the other womenWho all gave in to their lots in life.

The house is large with a majestic
Door, not seen anymore, embedded
In a brutish brick wall hedgedBy manicured bushes, which frame
And mirror her stiff and finicky
Deportments. Where is she off to
In that headscarf and perfect neck-bow?
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Of a pursuer. Like Laura Mulvey said,
We’re all looking with the gaze,
The male gazeand it’s whipping me upInto a fucking frenzy, and there is a lot
To think about in prison. But I think Cindy
Just ran in front of an old house and snapped
The pic, dressed up like an old fashioned gal.I wonder if she was ever stalked.

I’ve come here from my Midwest
Heartland town; stalks of wheat
And rows of corn were my backYards and the single stop light
On Main Street became a familiar
Friend. There was a boy but he
Didn’t come and now he’s gone.In New York every corner
Has a stoplight and every bar
Has a guy. I work long hours
Typing up memos and numbersBut I think I might make something
Of myself. At least I’m living
In the big city. And on the side
I have plans to start a business.

Are you in Paris? At the Palais
Royal perhaps. I remember
Being out there once, about 2am,In a bit of rain; I was spending
The summer trying to learn French
Before moving to New York
And I had spent the nightWith a young student who was
The friend of my girlfriend’s sister
And I rushed her to the metro –
Those art neuveau signs, like H.R. Giger’sDesign for Alien. Once I was alone and walking,
I got a text from a Stanford Professor,
A man who had taught my father
Back when he wanted to be a poet,
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Every morning on her way
To the subway to go uptown
For her secretarial jobAt Simon and Schuster.
For the past three months,
Since spring really started
To bloom, she saw the manWith the grey hat and brown
Terrier. And starting two months
Ago, he started to doff his hat
To her, his hair black-slicked,As if a layer of lacquer had been set,
And his smile, a razor edged hole
Ringed with juicy redness.
A month ago he said hello,And yesterday he got her information.

I got raped when I was thirteen,
By my boyfriend in Oklahoma,
But I never told anyone,And then we moved away,
So I never saw him again.
But that action stays
With me, right here,On my neck where he kissed
Me while he held me down.
Does he care?
Is he alive? What’s he doneWith his life? Probably nothing.
He did nothing of note but injure
A young girl; he’s a virus
That infected and effaced and was effaced.But I take showers and get clean.

She all in white, like I like;
It was back when her face
Was young and her straight noseStood out strong and innocent
On her smooth face.
The book she took,
Near the Maxfield Parish,To the Right of American Art
Since 1900, was something
About a dialogue, but I couldn’t quite see
What. The book that stood out
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Just to her left – the title of her own life.
She knew she was in my bad books,
And thought she was being stealthy.

Mediterranean – is that also her dressed
As FDR in the picture frame behind?
She’s a big momma with a fringe,Unapologetic, smoking her cigarette
Like The Real Housewives of Sicily,
Or maybe it’s that show Mob Wives.
That’s real shit, right? Funny,The way we accept crime
Within our midst. Mobsters
Are entertainment and the mobsters
Model themselves after entertainment.I bet you five hundred bucks
That every east coast gangster
Watched the Sopranos, every episode.
The Godfather is the godfather is the Godfather.

Something that reeks of Anna Magnani
From Rome Open City and Mamma Roma
When she played a whoreWho tries to get her handsome son
To put his life in order. Or maybe it’s Magnani
From the Brando film, The Fugitive Kind,
When he played a man named Xavier
In another story by Tennessee.Brando in the snakeskin jacket in New Orleans;
And that monologue in the beginning – wow –
About his guitar in hock, and a party on Bourbon Street
That he busted up because he wanted to pukeHis life up. But no, it’s a young Magnani here,
Not the old one with experience who could look back
On a career and say, “Actors might be crazy,
Self-centered and very hard to deal with,But I’d hate to live in a world without them.
