I don't want to love you the way you love me
Instead be gold leaf on the tip
of an earlobe like Sam Smith
and the world ends and summer
ends again feeling
To drop the holy host after a dance
and buy nothing but lip balm at the
church bazaar sale when at midnight
the mood swing drowns me whole
seven months before the first birth
fathering and then bar hops
with absent fathers under fat moons
and I wish I could tell you I have
something left after thousands of
dollars spent on manicures in
unlicensed salons because you liked
the way my hand looked when I
touched your dick
weren't you curious about
what it felt like to be touched by
an Angel like Dante
when he drew seven P's on my
forehead with a sword and said
"when you are inside be sure to
wash these wounds away"
I pray again and often for young mothers
whose babies suckle under hoop skirts
smeared with mauve tinted blush
the holy anastasia of whatever
what more could my unwed
ephemeral sacrifice be but to go
hard from the crying room and
relieve this urge to be a trope
the women are eating tadpoles now
to warn off winter or fashion week
a new diet of starvation in preparation
for skorts or pregnancy you laughed
there is that gal in white after labor day
invincible to treacherous male haunts
pulling eyelash glue out of her eyes
after it melted under Orlando sun
she wasn't the type to make out
with her brother's friends
But still the Irish cross won't protect
you girl and the angel might stop calling
and even block your number it's easy
now like pool boys in Bermuda shorts
near Upstate New York like
drinking maroon water ice and
ignoring guests requests for refills
I can ignore too the work of the poem
or your shooter fantasies how they
fill wounds before the newscasts
verify the fears of 21st -century
children on their knees and we
can talk trauma that kept us out
of the Ivy League and crippled us
mediocre in all these important ways
You like when I am mediocre
You say put your cheer skirt on
cup your breasts, pudding pop
stop causing trouble
and Googling Kim K.
stop talking about your baby brother
or how you are afraid to leave the house
stop saying you are fat and then eating
and stop leaving tampons in the pool
or crying openly in feminist theory
seminars being like
it is so hard to be a girl
and all my problems
come from the belief that I can love
only if I'm straddling you
and you are disinterested dead
and pale blue
wide feet in heels,
a busted fake flaneur
swept floors
as if someone will be coming
over soon
arguing in Disqus online forums until
I get what I need to hear
we learn only women can love
in a holistic sense just like a
lazy susan filled with candies
for visitors a girl's heart
my heart
is fast and ready and open
for you to aim shoot and kill
Copyright Credit: Laura Marie Marciano, "I don't want to love you the way you love me" from Mall Brat. Copyright © 2016 by Laura Marie Marciano. Reprinted by permission of Laura Marie Marciano.
Source: Mall Brat (The Accomplices, 2016)