Lani Scozzari
How will I learn to love
your father? His hand split
your mother’s cheek in jealous fury, possession:
hard-sack thud of fist on face—
Black-crack want gone mad.
At five in Jc Penney he dressed you:
new-black slacks, white-blue striped button-down—
We’re leaving. He said.
What about paying? You said.
We’re not paying. He said.
His eyes licked my breast when I met him,
tongue rolling over itself,
slippery and marbled: What do you weigh, little thing—
Please do not let him touch.
Don’t you believe in guns?
His finger blister-pointed in my face:
You’re running, a man throws you, pins you,
rapes you, a man raping you— raping you, raping you—
and you don’t wish
for a gun?
What I wish—
He snaps: a belt across the back: All women fuck you
in the end.
Gold-clank of chain. Eyes slick
as oil, I am afraid
of myself.