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Ellaraine Lockie |
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Enacting God at 2:00 A. M. I don't need a trip to New Delhi to condemn dogs eating dead female fetuses commingled in canals with pig carcasses Contempt for women so widespread that an annual five million mothers abort their baby girls at five months The atrocity marches in protest around the edges of my pro-choice position Little worms of doubt picketing their way to the center of discrepancy Demanding middle of the night resolution that would decompose women's rights By burrowing their blunt heads into finely honed freedom for which feminists fought But didn't foresee their Frankenstein creeping through Indian canals Exterminating an entire gender with the ultimate sex discrimination scythe In sleepless haze I weave between sponsoring women's liberation shelter anti-abortion missionaries or missiles aimed at India's mobile ultrasound machines In insomnia driven clarity I know that maggots will metamorphose wings and fly away in the morning But five-month fetuses will still cry from fully formed mouths Mother by Any Means She's sitting on my bar stool when I come back from the bathroom Her hand clamping a cocktail napkin over my cream sherry Don't I know there are men who drug women's drinks She glares across the table above cups of green tea Concerned over a man I've met online A masterful poet who metered murdering half the population of L.A. A maniac she admonishes And don't mail him your address She's pacing the New Mexican motel room at midnight when I return from the grocery store Where locally grown produce overpowered me for an extra hour She's unable to understand the epicurean pull of sixteen species of peppers with recipes honoring each I'm unable to understand her panic that I was impounded by something more menacing than a pepper Until I remember motherhood when she was an adolescent and saw herself immortal Contrary to me now who knows I could die any day I elect not to allude to the charging rhino in South Africa Nor mention the motorcycle and marijuana I'm saving for special occasions Omissions kindred no doubt to my daughter's when I waited up late for the end of each date Road Kill Resurrected I pick up a poetry journal and read that I'm a metaphor for road kill The perfect poetic device Just the one I would have used Because it's me all right Blindsided all over that high road I recognize the unsuspecting stare the certitude of love in the scattered eyeballs The thick black film of surprise that the words <i>Sorry Babe but</i> . . . before the head-on hit and run would have stretched into steely gray strength But instead spreads like fresh tar over frozen concrete Heart and feminine innards you no longer needed Like rocks in smooth resin Steam rises behind your sixty m.p.h. escape Where my spirit ascends even higher And scrapes up its own carnage with the wings of self-respect I've flown far away now Hover high above any heartache A thin film of hope floats down in the form of feathers Emily Dickinson's metaphor |