BY KRISTIANA COLON

Hey there pretty girl
Hey there sister I never met
Yella’ gal I never knew
but whose name swirled around my head like a malodorous breeze
putrid as the stench of crisping flesh when mama snuffed her newports
on your cute cake batter shoulders and collar bone

Hey there lovely girl whose name resounds with mine
two haunting notes sung in harmony
by the condemning choir of our peers
I never saw nothin’ of ya but a wistful smile gazing up from a photo
used to supplement some gossip
but their voices knotted the same nooses round our necks
pressed the same blades to our flesh

Hey there angel with your soft celestial glow
tugging at your halo
like sunday school girls tug at the elastic bands of stiff white stockings
cuz it somehow doesn’t fit
is somehow mocking the way it hovers lopsided over the crown of your head
dusting your perfect face with its light
Don’t feel quite right
cuz you never been nothin’ holy before
only known sour maledictions
the taste of some other daddy’s dick
in the janitor’s closet
the smell of bleach and mildewed mop tangled with the stink of cum
in your baby girl panties

All the while other daddies beamed at their pretty pigtailed little girls
mary janes ridin the bridge of daddys feet as they danced
across the freshly waxed gymnasium floor

No pretty girl
you never been nothin’ holy before
writhed and grunted under a grown man’s groin
and he was just mindin’ his bidness
didn’t want no trouble
till your fast behind switched by with a red lollipop
and waist-length brown velvet ribbons of hair
framing that impish fuckme smile

Hey there pretty girl
sister I never met
comeherecomeherecomehere
Let me ask you something
Let me ask you some questions
I wanna know you sister
cuz no one ever did
no one ever did know nothin’ but your cunt
or tales of it
If you were a genius
What kinda art you liked
Maybe there were poems buried in your journal
tucked in a shadow under your bed
Maybe you loved shakespeare
sung sonnets to yourself in the mirror

I wanna make you human again
silence the folklore
sift through the filth and extract you beautiful
Maybe you were a girl
a girl becoming a woman
and we never knew it

I wanna know you sister
because I am your obituary
because didn’t neither one of us know adolescence would be a tribunal
intimate tribal revenge ripping at us
while we was tryin’ to grow up
Didn’t neither one of us expect to be the favorite little adulteress
the most cherished harlot
the treasured little heretic with blushing wrists to bind

We both teetered on the edge of life
as precariously as we did on the brink of adulthood
We were both just on the brink of living sister
Because I cried for you when they told me
and dyin’ never did that to me
kissed the pallid lips of death and never felt nothin’

I hope the boy who found you loved you
was not repulsed by your pretty face
bloating and blue
I hope the boy who found you loved you
and cut you down from his ceiling reverently
like a rare piece of fruit no one ever took the time to taste

Maybe if I loved you
you coulda lived
Maybe we coulda held each other
protected each other from the stones cast
Maybe I coulda shielded your scarred body
from the constant barrage of condemnation

Slut bucket

Sex Pot

Ay dawg! Ay dawg! yeah
I fucked her too
and she ain’t got
no walls
man
like doin it to a water bowl
man

I couldn’t feel nothin’