P.S. Assault

1

It took seconds for himto push me down then he was done—I was supine. Perpendicular, the tree. That nightwe made a kind of staggering diagram in the parking lot.How had he risen from me? Jerked out, rolledoff.        Crude knuckles scuffed by fatigue and dust, the rootsof the tree inches from my face. Had he grippedmy wrist, pressed a knife at my neck?

For decades I’ve walked in a daze.        through insect-amputees who are not deadbut don’t have the gut or grip to shield their goodremaining legs. They’re scuttle-dry and yellow-gray        as a storm-gripped sky.For decades I’ve walked        in a daze through this day’s recitations.Low crawl of red through the leavesI pulled myself up. Parallel, the tree. That nightwe made a kind of shuddering frame for the air.How had he gotten me down? Had he seized        my arm or waist. … I don’t remember the least.

2

Rape felt stripped. And spare. Brute.        The daughters march with their blindfolds on,        their dresses stiff-whipping around their bare ankles,straight into the Arctic.They make a voiceless parade,        bleached as drift-sticks.They move with the inevitabilityof dreams. I am someone’s daughter among them.         Once upon in a parking lot…I saidrepeatedly…then my voice faltered, fell off, my eyes distractedby wind insistently pulling the curtainsapart and the dead flower in its glass of water.

3

The girl it happened to crawled outof my bodystraight into the grass that bordered the lotwhere she lay face-up, a clothdoll termites drilled into, leaving tiny holesin her yellow cheek, the two heaps of her eyes,her flopping elbows, and wherethe once-mouthwas, licked by leaves and wet dark.You’ll find me there too—I am sweepingup seed-husks and twigs to clear a circle around her.I keep a respectable distancewhile admiring her silence and how substantialshe looks, how weightless she is.        There is something beautiful about her even as sheperforates, eaten by mites and rot, something coolly autonomousas though she never belonged to the body.        Look again and the doll isn’t a doll at allbut a lump in the grass, doubled-over, small, hard-eyed as bone.

No assailant in view.

4

In the aftermath     I was a crudefigure: 2 stick-arms 2 stick-legs     streakof blood     blurry crotch     no eyes        no mouth—legs re-positioned     hair maladjustedhead propped     I was his prop     or was I        faint as starlight at the edge of dawn faintas a fawn’s flank     spattered with so much universe        I diminished—human,     hungryfor nothing.

5

Shame is my orientation.        See the straight pink pines by the wildflower field, the blackeyes edged by petals staring through me? And the panic        of wild turkeys wherever I loom.

There are mosses and twigs and camouflage rods in the forest,and leaves in the dusty trees to hide behind.        But I awaken again, too clear, in thatmemory. … what I didn’t do, what was done. The        cock-limp and stutter and smear—.Oracle,who taught me Shame? Why did I take itupon myself?Why can’t I inch forth?        Will I ever stop sinking?How is it I always feel wrong?    If I could slip you off—quick as cornsilk.…        If you hadn’t become my skin, Shame        If you hadn’t become my shame, Skin

6

the dream-bee burst through an orange bloomdream-bee burst through a bloomy worlddream-bee burst a blurry seaburst me from the dreamo beethe stranger heaved his weight on methe stranger bore a hole in methe stranger tore the me from meleaden as the bulletsI keep lining on my sillI am heavy and multiplelittle helmets        little tombs        little pillsWhen x skin x blood whenx blood xgash x gash x himcan’t find the body that belongs...