Body Parts


She's got a body that's everywhere. . .
Body parts to fit any landscape.

She's a nation, war-torn, with a man walking all over her
                                           on the six o'clock news.
He's an American Goliath standing on a map of the world,
                                     making a war accessible.
"This is where it's happening," he says,
             standing on her navel.
"They're coming down from the mountains."
     (Even her secret hiding places, those tiny trails
                                 through the woods,
                                             are being ravaged. . . )
He walks on.
"We could bring American troops in here," he says,
             standing on her knee. . .


           A picture on the screen
           of a child with no arms
           of a man with one leg. . .
           of twelve year-old girls
           strip-searched and raped. . .
           held down, penetrated
           and sown by the enemy.
         "You're mine," says the soldier.
         "You're conquered."
           His seed grows. . .
           She rips it from her belly
             with her own hands,
             bloody and salted with tears.
         "What do you want from me?!" she screams.
         "More land," he answers. . .



And when she cries,
  this woman of body parts, like the earth ransacked,
  the tears only flow from one of her eyes---
  the one she's been left with to cry from---
  a madwoman's eye with the world in it
  and fear looking out.
Her left eye cries
   a river of tears.



She's a tenement in the ghetto with her windows busted out
   and torn curtains flapping, like bandages in the breeze.
Her cunt, a crack palace---smoke-filled,
             with dreams by the score
                                 burnt into ashes.
She's knee-deep in death, with an arm full of holes
   and the Lord's prayer in her veins---
           Thy will be done, Thy kingdom is come---
                               wet and slick. . .
And her body, the street, silver-edged like a switchblade,
           cutting the night into bite-sized pieces.
She's for sale. . .  her body parts hollow---
   empty of wishing that there's anywhere else to go.

Her children are shipwrecked in the waters of Lethe---
   that place in hell, where lives are forgotten
             and souls rent asunder. . .
   like a face in the mirror, with one fist shattered. . .
                         too many pieces to fit together again.


She's a lit slit of neon strip in the Las Vegas desert. . .
   a slot machine jackpot of possibility. . .
   a hot swollen clit, with a G-spot inside.
They're coming in droves, looking for it---
                                       the big score. . .
Strip-mining her dry, as she glitters and writhes. . .
   side-winding her way through the Las Vegas night.

She's a flame-throwing, sword-swallowing, mirage of a woman. . .
Her blood flowing down the boulevard like abundance itself.
She's the Red Sea parting. . .
   complete with fishes and multiplying loaves, there for the taking.
 
She's satisfaction guaranteed and topless tonight,
   with tassels on her teats,swinging this way and that. . .
   like planets rotating, out of sync, for ten cents a pop. . .
   while coins, like chains clanking, clinking---fall into cups.


She's big and round and packed solid like a fortress,
   with a wounded child inside . . .
             wearing three year-old shoes,
             a six year-old blue dress,
             and eight year-old panties 
                 with the days of the week sewn on . . .
     And she doesn't remember the days
             that she lost. . .
     Where she put them---
           in the dollhouse she lived in,
                   too tiny for words. . .
           curled up like a snail in a shell,
                 in a box, in a drawer.

And now she's huge---a fat circus lady,
   with memories of Hiroshima and Chenobyl. . .
               Nagasaki and Bhopal, in the folds of her flesh.
If you listen close, you hear children keening,
                                 like women wailing the dead.



She's the last breath taken  by the last of its kind. . .
Extinction--- a song never heard again.
She's the hour between night and dawn,
   when the earth stands still to mourn her loss---
             the decimation of whale   wolf    rhino
                               elephant  eagle. . .
             of virgin forests, highly prized. . .
                           slashed and burned...
                 their body parts sold to the highest bidder.

She's a spider-woman, with eyes all around her head. . .
               looking to the past, present and future. . .
                       weaving her web of Fate.
On the edge of a cliff, on one foot balanced. . .
     she's one woman dancing, her arms to the sky. . .
             One woman dancing to the beat of the drum
                       at the heart of the earth. . .
                 spiraling in, to gather her selves,
                       her body parts together. . .

Reclaiming her landscape.