Rochelle Hurt
It could open with a party, strewn
with girls like tinsel, girls looking
for a house to stuff themselves in, girls
with two parents, girls glaring
with the joy of needlessness.
Or a chase scene: the snagged walls
of the Dallas house like a mother’s dress,
long-emptied of men, and closing on me.
I never wanted a home in him,
but the sex was like licking sheets
of corrugated iron, torn maw breathing
the corrosion in, the scent of him alone
like coming into a father’s midnight grip.
In this way, I was forever
the runaway, indolent little trinket of his.
But if you want it, I’ll give
the story of a woman’s deboning
by a pair of junk-rutted hands,
her good marrow honed to a prick
on the butt of a shotgun.
And how she loved it, the sin itself
a kind of homelessness.