The Poetry Marathon

Her diary spills the truth cross the bare floor
Not just one killed her body many cut
Her soul to tears til she is not a girl

She is the body.

She had a mother and father til death
Dreams floating to a time past tomorrow
Before use, abuse, alcohol – despair

She was more than the body.

But a body be only flesh and bone
When bones break again smashed to a stone wall
The heart beats still but the hope burns dry – dies

She became a body

When a corpse no longer uses lips to speak

It is a body

When history dies and just torn flesh remains

It is the body.

When it goes to ground it is less still – past

The body will become a passing memory. Forgot when the last memory holder dies. Dead truly. For all time.

In life she was a girl. She became a body. Now the body rots.

Soon, it won’t be the body.

Winter 1891

One frostee day Emma got control the hous.

I was told to leeve. I learne reed and writ sum. But not enuf to teech skool.

Also, they dont take girls like me.

I got a room.
One windo. Sum lite. Dark nite.

The rent is hi. I see men by 30 or more everee day. Then I may pay.

Befor they bring gifts. Now they thro cash and use my stomac like a bed, down ther like a spring.

I am sor. They cum and cum and only in dark nite do I clos the door.

Sum beet me since they drink. Sum beet me since they pay.

A bottle cheep gin by the bed. A bottle on the table. I use it cleen the smell.

I use it dul my head.

I use it til I will bee dead.

Niaevete can break cold hearts froze still.
I read knowing she never got her will.

I see now an orphan goes to survive
A body must live and be where it can.

I still see not how this once young pure face
Came swollen and swarmed by the hungry flies.

Summer 1883

I can’t write good.

Emma writes for me.

Some days I am low down sad. A dog chewing his rope to catch a rabbit at field.

Dad is dead 10 summers, feels a hundred moons. Mom is dead but a few.

I want to get a dollar and spend my pennies up. The man with yhe peeling paper and cigar ash on the floor had nothing for me.

One lady offers me food and bed – all I do is lay on my bed. I do what they say. They stay nice that way.

This is so I can remember

One day

One of these wealthy men will take me away.

I don’t want to forget how the curl of mama’
s hair twirled round like steam rising from the coffee.

I won’t forget bare splintered floors when I have rugs.

At last I came there – where she worked and died.
One bed, one window, one door – nothing else.

Her bed unable to tell of all she led.

I found one board raised up and dug in there
I dug up the poorly spelled truth laid bare.

A prostitute saw that eye once, in a rented room on the outskirts of an Arizona town.

Man, mule and body.
Cross the sands.
5 cactus to 500 miles of grain.

His foreheads sops his hat, drips to his chin, down his shirt.

The haze stings his cheeks a touch. The mule slows.

He has to cross one thousand miles of this to go where she said to go.

He wants to leave it on the sand. Soon the wind will blow, erase the eye, the skin. None will be ever found.

But his gut feels heavy just to lay his parcel down.

So through the crushed shell and dirt he drives the beast on. Once he knows its story then the stabbing burn will be gone.

I take my burden cleansed fresh in the stream
I clothe the body in a scented cloth
I hide the stench and scars upon the flesh.

Beneath the gloves lay broken dirty nails
The fingertips now purple, curved tight.

Face brown and yellow, bruised about the side.
Cuts and scratches. Fresh and old. Crevice. Cracks.

To hide the damage I can bare one eye.
I can show no further skin or remenant.

To look at scars is seeing creation.

The day I drank the bottle
He was customer
23

Not a record
Not a mention
Often 40 or more for me.

He slapped me once.
I felt a slight sting
Though he struck like a spooked horse
Stamping round the ground.

Swollen flesh
Hot to touch
Means a dollar to me.

20 more bruises I shall be able to pay my room fee.

On this day I thought a thought.
A mistake
Any day.

I thought of not the current lumps and sore bits and today – but on to tomorrow’s pain.

When I did

God rest my soul

I drank the bottle whole.

I stop first by the church for help for aid
I want to find her family to rest
To put this sad body inside its grave.

“See here young man
Your heart is full of good
But put your Christian charity
Where a good Christian should.

You find a body in the day
It smells of rot
Begins its decay.

You want someone to know this woman is dead
But this is no godly woman son
Her gloves are lace
Her dress is torn
I am sure this a woman of scorn
A whore.

Leave this body I will place it in the ground.
But I will be given no trouble to track her kin down.”

Be she a whore or be she not cannot
I accept this line of thought and belief.

I gather my cart carrying body
The cart laid heavy with mysteries grief.

Light streaked cross my room
Alighting the dust
Landing on my bread and dancing
On my water.

Mother ran brush through my hair
Preased my wrinkles out
With the heavy cast iron.

The sound of children shouts soundtracked my days.
Their snores tickled my ears.
I can remember the touch of mother’s hand through my curls.
Staring at the crack in logs. Silencing my dancing musings.

One day I went to find the bread soaked in its rays.
I found a body on the floor. My mother no more. Just a body.

In my twenties the dust still danced. Across my room
Waiting for a man to come.
I had much idle time then.

I could not read.

I sewed streaks like sun across my blankets amd waited.

Eventually the sun still streaked. But I did not feel a warm burn. I did not see a dust ballet.

Til I was a body as my mother had been the years before.