Selecting girls

Who ate from my womb?
My daughter is now gone
The hooded face of you!
Peeling my hips like an orange
My breast, citrus quarters!

And my body, it has stirred sleepily
From its numb roots
Melted the green flesh of the vine.
My arms, warm quarters
Bother a crib, an auctioned house
With seven bedrooms
Eight neat beds

And ten bee boxes swelled with gold limbs!
The river has returned this year
The fishing boats, the swollen bodies
Of bathing pregnant women have also come
Sweeping the fruit from the trees
A swarm of fruit flies.
Oh the sky is falling!

Who ate from my womb?
Picked the flecked mole from my stomach
Stole life like beans?
Lima beans, with a dark laughter,
A half smile.

The replacement

Early morning, jabbing at the lite end
Of an infected toe nail. A photograph of
Daddy, he is soft porn in the bed-sit.
Early morning, you have been gone for over an hour
And I am a lame off-cut, limping to the toilet
To the window wearing nothing
But green feathered earrings.
I have decided to eat nothing, stare into an empty plate
Envision cheese and liquor chocolate,
Bits of my lover (for breakfast)

I have taken to sleeping with the cat, to picking at
Its black and white fur like stuck tape
Replacing your drunk sperm
With its spearmint eyes.
Its delightful love bites
With your lips. I remember them,
Plump as oyster flesh, quietly stretched
Across your face after sex. Those lips,
Buttered tarts, things to long for on bus trips.

Being man

Being man
You are built for bullfights.
Being woman
I am built for children
And homes.

I have eaten all of my children
I have burnt down my homes.

You have killed a crippled bull for me.
Anchored its bloodied head above the kitchen door
Like a Catholic cross.

Being woman
I have cooked nothing but clover,
Nothing but children.
Being man
You have eaten without asking,
Loved me without warning
Deeper then bone.

Sixteen

Laying in the
Backseat
Belly pushed flat
As a
Stone
Against his.
The streetlight peers through
The space of hips
Silently touching.

Sitting dead
Lying dead

His chin like a turkey’s neck.
Left thigh pressed along
The valour seat covering
As he comes
In his
Best jeans.

Poor
Little
Petal.

Jessika Tongs has been published in the westerly, ygdrasil, polestar, the new England review, Taj Mahal review, Arrow publishing and the speed poets zine.

E-mail: Jessika Tongs