Feral Rage For the little happy lady

by Anne Elezabeth Pluto

Your name comes
up in my mean girl
Rolodex—buried
deep into the last
century—you emerge
first in a grainy photo
second in a long
sad story—l jerk
at your name—seeing
your landlocked mermaid
body—a woman slithering /while
the rest of us were
still girls—shamefully secret
in our menstrual
cycles my heart
torn on my sleeve
his initials carved
deep in my blood.
And bone.
We were done
and you, curled
around him schoolyard smoke
Snake Ouroboros
while I was caught
in the Easter air my yard long
hair unraveling
all the roads out
of this tragic constellation.
for years—
I stood up to him and
Stated I was a virgin.

Untouched—while you
fucked your way through
those foolish handsome boys
What happened in your house?
That turn(ed) your girlhood
into the scent
of some trampled goddess—
the smear of your
blood on too many sheets—your
feral rage aroused, carried
in a purse
along with your makeup?

I flung my rage into the night.
I tore the heart off my sleeve
I embroidered skin over bone
I carved his name into little stars
(And now, all the world
Will be in love with night)
then kicked the horse
and rode
far, far away.