theology

you hurt women because you think that they
don't love you. i write this at the end of every
letter i write and seal the envelope with birds.
i also write that you don't want to be happy
and that you are a liar. i want to write I AM
A WOMAN and spit bile all over the pages,
but i am a dry state. every day i drag myself
around as if you have broken both my legs
and given my voice away.

dominance

if life was fair i would be able to give you
more than word after word, breathing smoke
into your mouth like beds and surprises. if life
was fair my skin would be your wind-breaker.
if life was fair you would have been born crazy,
a murderer, or a junkie, and i would have lain
on train tracks for you and given birth for
you. i would have cracked myself into two
like your grandmother's china and fucked
strangers for money. i'd have died for you in snow
drifts and shot heroin into my heart and
measured out love in pints of blood. if life was
fair i would be able to give you more than a poem.
i would give you more than that.

violence

but nothing's fair. i am silent and washing down
your heart with liquor and codeine, my own
disappointment. my face is hammered into
your window. my face is a bruise that you are
ashamed of. i lie on the floor like a broken bone and
scratch out the sound of your name with nightmares
and knives.