My sugar-buttered childhood taught me how to
Speak in soothing sherbet tones,
Crystal-encrusted,
And embroider thick summer blossoms
Onto the slippery pink satin of my tongue
Years of coiled yarn spin themselves
Into an entangled mess of femalehood
Red dress plastered onto my limbs
Stretching over the mounds of fleshy plump
Impasto swathes of kitchen breeding
Seeping through my pores like granny lavender
Floral sunshine, spinning teeth
My mouth that actually bites and snaps
And spits out mistakes and curse words
Lips full of vitriolic acid and insecurities
Febrile is my temperament, rouged and ferocious
My feet clap with lightning rod high heels
Burning itch beneath finger nails
My tunic of rage ribbed with horror
The furnace in my belly, swelling and rolling
The tips of my tongue flicking flames
Off into the sunset-rich horizon that holds no future
Or promise.
I blow on my conch
The howling despair that bends to the moon
Pale orb cut by Father Time’s sickle
This complicated bracken maze
Of what it means to breathe
With the weight of swollen breasts
Fondled roughly by dark-glassed men
Clawing, crawling eyeball gazes
Wolf calls that scathe
Canine want, growling desire
Barking, roaring for a piece
Beaded, heaving clouds
Trousers dragged forth from jiggling belly
Near the erect centre
The monolith of manhood
Spiked, slick
Coated in sweaty entitlement
The cream-soft thighs forced
Into a wide, shrieking V –
For vagina, for virginal, for virtue –
Taking all you want
Spoonfuls flowing over
Tureens of dimpled pudding
Devoured with unseeing gluttony.
Under The Nail 