This poem is based on my struggle with the chronic pain condition Vulvar Vestibulitis. It won an Honorable Mention for the 2009 Ellen Hansen Memorial Prize, a contest celebrating the strength of women. It was also part of my collection of poetry that won second place for the 2010 Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize.
Life Gets Smaller
Be as angry as you like.
I.
I sing of withered fruit
and a ring-circle deep
tender brushing and the bruising
I am the apple uneatable
Cotton fingers balance on the just-inside of me
the waterproofing, the duck-billed pressure
blossoms
Why don’t we speak of emptiness?
Why not eggshells in the drain,
paper bags,
and what lies between my legs
when my legs lie open and there’s no way in?
I suppose
I am the apple unanswerable.
To say, “There is nothing behind fat flesh but
my own flesh
which is white
and forever my flesh!”
To say, there is something tough
and trembling-
it is
my red slick skin
fell from a stemless tree.
II.
Speak, orgasm!
and say what you came for.
Did I give you birth
only to limp up another hill?
You are but one half,
a wrinkled shell that splits without
the weighted grain within.
My nails scratch me,
my briar breath thrashes.
In boarding school young
men’s bodies betray
them: stretching gussets, blushing.
My body betrayed itself,
turned me dry
birthed me into being,
sharp as a walnut husk.
III.
Art, bosom-swollen, gave the neck that was tied with black ribbon.
Olympia’s thin hands,
and what lies between her legs-
I have been promised: they open.
Mother gave, and her mother gave milk-roundness, gave life up to
all of my sisters
are fucking in tow-trucks.
Sisters!
I’ll pay you for your apples!
I’ll let you keep the seeds!
mine are safe in brittle bags
that rattle when I walk
IV.
The tube curled up inside me
pulses and clenches and bleeds,
forms a face.
Her expression does not change,
in the coils of her hair I know
she has no chance of changing.
Her grin inside me is spread wide open
without my teeth
I bite her down with my eyelids.
Each month I push her away
I am departure and never destination.
I am the apple unreachable.
V.
What is left?
Apple seeds
lining the only entrance to my body.
Skin-sleeved
and wax-sheathed
seeds pop and writhe and split and sing:
I know I have no chance of changing.
Life, please eat away
the smallest touch and the lightest hand
the greatest broken edge of me.
