Suck on the Marrow

At Madame Jane’s

50 At Madame Jane’s S You’ll be a platter for their cornbread a skillet for their sauce these city boys with dreams of country cunt You will dust yourself in flour if it’s a dead nigger ghost they want I tell you yesterday I let two blistered brothers splay me like a dressed out doe Boys with no more money than a chimney sweep will pay six days wages to lay you under a felted whip They reel in here off the river They hitch themselves this deep into the Buzzard’s Roost then hop off of the train They pay for promise in my house Tell them, Take me any way you want me (don’t call them ugly) you the boss man you the one to show me what I need (don’t call them poor) 51 Got a judge comes here first wet his loins inside a mammy looked enough like you Burnt the last girl’s hands when he bent her over the stove I see to it the doctor tends her She’s been useless nearly two weeks but I tell you she still has her room her herbs and plenty food 52 S It would cost an auctioneer the price of two good mules to do you like he does girls everyday A hand, a mouth, a pair of iron pincers come around your tongue someone must of already paid Take your dress off slowly if it suits you I can charge them two bits just to watch a tit slip out the top Got a doctor brings his son here so the boy can study how the inside of a woman moves When you came here asking me for shelter were you shy? No point in a nigger being shy There’s an auction outside the Congress Hotel this evening remember you been naked all your life good for little more than breeding dirty dreams I say it’s time you see that profit and that power Remind me what you said that lawyer used to make you do well then 53 you’ll find the fellow waiting upstairs easy He’ll want to watch you take your supper from a chamber pot I’ve stowed a clean one by the bed stand Take this stew 54 S I’ll call you what I want and the men will too Hepsie Hephzibah Rebecca girl what makes you think you someone worth a name? Got a bed to sleep on don’t nobody come in less they pay You only got to worry on that lawyer or his brother choosing you when they sober enough to recognize your new fat face and don’t nobody come inside this house I don’t want in Nothing else to worry ’bout so you fretting over who to be today Working here you’re nobody and everyone Best to forget you ever belonged to a body could choose to answer to one name 55 Someone who love you call you Becca? You want your past to track you now? I burned the dress and boots you scuttled in here wearing How many pair of boots I bring you yesterday? Work for me a year you’ll have money for a trunk of dresses and a steamer ticket out of here if you believe there’s anywhere to go I won’t allow you to stay in my house sounding out the letters of some missing slave girl’s name ...