Snatch

you can rinse the blood away with a stream of piss,
she explained to herself.
she didn't expect to feel it slide out;
thick and tough,
she thought briefly about how it might burst
if pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
she didn't expect to spread her doughy thighs
to watch it glide down the white porceline bowl
and sink helplessly to the bottom of the toilet water.
it hadn't time to learn how to swim.

It didn't seem right to her,
all of the other women in the bathroom had no idea,
they swarmed around her stall,
heels forcing corporate, dignified sounds on the tile,
making their meetings on time,
wiping themselves from front to back,
inserting tampons,
washing their hands and straightening their skirts...

How did they earn it?
They were allowed to be so
DAMN
PRETTY.
She's never been that pretty.

Staring past her tuft of untamed pubic hair,
legs spread tensely, feet pointed; more a workhorse
than a dancer
she feels apelike in her false birth;
her bloody clot drowning in a toilet, what would've been an eye
shaping up it's mother,
a few faint blood vessels...
a clot is all.

maneuvering her labia, she instinctually squirts a stream of hot yellow piss
erasing the streak of light pink blood, entrails & evidence
from the shimmering white.

automatic flush when she stands up
by the time she turns around she realizes it's been snatched away from her

From now on, she vows, from now on
I will be numb to this shit,
I will be terse.

(Compost Heap, 2010)