Charm School for Miserable Girls
I have these moments where I know
my fears have come to face me.
The bell rings, and I know where to be.
With all of this accumulating,
I feel like a genius.
I dial the misery warden. Oh,
stop there. Oh, give me pause, oh,
let me collect something
willingly.
I bathe in the archive of wickedness,
the witchy woman wants my leftovers,
small-eyed rapscallion observing my hands,
my hands which cup and cup and
let the water out each time
before I get to drink it.
She is smiling at me.
I would smile back but my features
have relocated.
I am walking on my expressions.
Are you there, picture-taker?
Are you there cataloging me
in my natural habitat, the pit
in which I fester and
foreshadowing my exit from it?
Okay, I am ready for air
if you will bring it to me.
I have these moments where I know,
I have to face my fears.
I can feel my ineptitude stamping me
with a hot iron and I walk into every room
with a dunce cap stapled to my brow.
The schedule meets the chalkboard,
all of the children are hollow.
Turn in your assignments,
Esmeralda, get your gun.
Imagine my frustration in this cycle of beasts,
eating your deficits as cruel morsels.
There is a hideous girl eating her knuckles.
Riveting, how unlovable she is,
I’d have to pity her regardless.
Are you staying for dinner?
I’ve prepared a buffet at the backyard pool.
Your father drowned himself there
because your brother married a
man far more handsome than him.
Misery loves company
and everyone in this family loves harm.
Despite my hexes, I won the lottery.
With it, I bought a gown,
but you still won’t marry me.
I think I don’t sounds better anonymously
so I place your abandoned ring on the wicker
without a note on the day
you took your furniture from my house.
You are not my savior.
Coming down through
a sky full of nettles with your head empty,
emulating the younger self
nursing the dolly in the crib
rocking away its imagined fury.
In a gesture of romance,
you lay me on my back.
Now, I think I am in the crocodile’s mouth,
but he says he will not shut his jaw on me
if I am very good at riddles.
My mouth moves, but it’s solving nothing.
This is the middle school section,
please read The Suicide Pact for Dummies,
with a safety pin in your eyelid.
The exit sign flashes in intervals,
but it is not for those girls.
The mother of them unveiled atrocity today,
I feel for her tremendously.
She is feeding the girls the sun, and her ghost is angry
that they are almost big enough to take it all in one bite.
At last, fetch your rulers
for home economics and
line up while the lady measures your thighs.
Every girl in this room gets a finger or two
in between each recording.
There is enigma on the ceiling
but you’ll miss its appearance
if you stare too long at any pale girl
in that same room, enduring that
same suffering. Save that sympathy lesson
for motherhood.
She is going to hate you no matter what you do.
Her debt begins at birth and interest
collects at the conclusion of virginity or sacrifice.
It costs a fortune to get back from it
the first time.
