Girls stay invisible says the woman
I could become if I never left
Massachusetts and let myself long
for pleasure, get planted in the ground,
crest my crown off the coast, ride
all the swans in common. Say mute
in New York, invasive in Manhattan,
cygnet by my favorite Russian’s tongue.
My Russian is no woman, but yes
pleasure, he who—listen some, in St.
Petersburg I could’ve been: small, very
flou kind of girl, pretty little photism, so
and so: his palpable girl grown on
words, light-papered walls, fluttering for the
moths. I am many mouths and
months away from being someone’s
bag. I never needed a feeding
tube in Massachusetts, nor, for that
matter, did I require nutrients in Illinois
or Missouri. Florida, though: glimpse
through the mist my anklets (tendons),
bracelets (cicatrix), coccyx (bruised),
soul-weather (vitreous, smashed, delete).
Were you in Florida, woman? Did
I meet a Disney man, too? Fourteen,
eighteen, seventy-two: I charmed the guards,
licked their flavored tattoos. Pleasure,
we argue, starts with night-Grammy’s
or soft truffled cheese, a slideshow of
cheagles and porgis: other hybrid
dogs. The DNA test is a clickable
truth. The woman is a cluck away
from her soft-cornered hen house.
And the man is seventy-eight, eighty-
one, four or seven, charting his
stabby afterimage in Montana,
California, Orlando, Massachusetts:
we argue about Othello and Iago,
bad hair and grainy lost time, in-
visible girl: I know what I see. Scene
where I am only you. Call
woman—brazen, brackish, back
watered, not the one I pay to see,
woman with scattered scabs who feeds
me carved smiles and nod after nod
as I search my week for some
state or another that would benefit
from garbled recreate: it was like
this and I cried that, which was
one way to call my wolf a sheep:
march into the woods and unclip
that leash. Do we have anything
else in Massachusetts, viscid
state to which I’m stuck? We have
witches in Massachusetts and good
schools in Salem. Classroom swath
of Massachusetts. Strong maple
smoke curling from the woodshed
called Massachusetts: primers and
grammars and crooks. I thought
I had missed all my country; hadn’t
my girl gone untook? Oh they spelled
me by the throat, tunnel red-swabbed
and stung. Spit, spit, spit. They
knew me by the hole, the crook
in my door. The nose in the crack:
dog again, hungry for dust called joy.
I confess I do not believe my dog;
there’s a little girl inside her,
invisible but for her wet eyes. Crumbs
of people sleep in her fur, the
animal from my natural state, she
from the cramped up city, east of
Mississippi. From the backseat she’s
sniffed Connecticut, New York,
Minnesota, Vermont. She is not at all
large, not very, not tall. Twelve girls
over state lines—New Hampshire—dark
taxes, shotgun booze, skimpy
women—and woof, she eats yams
to care not when I sob, she tucks in her
ball. Massachusetts, Massachusetts,
who was I in Missouri, unleashed
on casinos and confluences, ready to
get in any guy’s boat. Drop and push
twenty, thirty, forty, five. Knees
in the air, triceps wide. Triangle, clap,
flush, fold. We steered Wednesday
upstream, ate afternoon sun one Thursday,
braced my neck for donuts one
bent-over morning. Was I the girl
inside of myself? I remembered
Canada, Vancouver—what do they
call a state in Canada? What do
they name a scene, a mood, a fidget,
a flight? Six hours, three snacks,
several sideways looks. I needed
tennis courts across the city, raw
vistas and fish on the second floor
next to the French president. Pass
me the ha-ha, bridgelet my sorrows.
Row, row: we paddled into nothing
and our boat held me down, oar
slapping fish thinking, sun cresting,
coast, coast, splashed throat: I
could’ve drowned my good
hopes. One man took me to my
first orchard and fed my neck,
red lips, apple throat: Pink Lady,
Sweet Sixteen, American Gala
Beauty Crisp. They make these
in Minnesota, he said, which meant
at a lab in the U. An apple is a
boat, hollowed out for peanut butter,
raisins; an apple star stamped on
your palm keeping you in the club
(I am always hungry), pared
into eight or twelve (wanting), twenty
-four, forty-two, depending on your state.
An orange was snack. The men
smuggled more: cigarettes and chalk
for us to trace our bodies on
concrete. Crush my head, said the
skinnies dribbling, afraid of their women,
escaped from their tall Russian men.
We would’ve chosen basement life,
state of mold, better invisible stars:
flush with the ceiling, albino by day.
