In case you didn’t hate me enough already
I want implants.
I want Botox tips from my mother.
I want to zap the spider veins
right out of my long, pretty legs.
I want to wear lipstick, wax
my eyebrows, wax my pussy,
wax my stubborn upper lip.
I want to wear designer dresses,
designer shoes. I want to burn
every pair of jorts I ever owned.
I want to submit and submit and submit.
The last time a man on the street
told me I was beautiful,
I said thank you.
I am a thief
We met in a museum – your head was tilted up,
face blurred. I could never see your shoes,
though I tried. We followed each other
up and down staircases, between beetle-
gnawed taxidermy displays, met at the feet
of the Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil and there
is no metaphor here.
There was a spoon in your hand and I took it,
baby in your arms and I lifted him first into mine,
turned and placed him in my mother’s.
The cat is in my lap now, the man is in my house.
The baby does not fuss, but I also do not feed him.
If there was a dog, he would be at my feet,
devoted and panting.
There is really no such thing as winning
Every lover you will ever have
takes a plaster cast of your face,
paints a mask of you.
We’re all in somebody’s closet,
disembodied, kabuki-ed, nasal
voice just waiting to come out.
We design sets and are designed
for them. We burn theaters down
in each city we open our legs.
Salt the earth. Curse the ground.
Summon ghosts to your high school
boyfriend’s childhood bedroom.
You will never win this land war.
Run and fuck and run and fuck
and call it making love,
but I know you and I know me
and neither of us is Russia,
you cunt.
Margaret Bashaar’s first full-length poetry collection, Stationed Near the Gateway, is due out from Sundress Publications in 2015. Her poetry has also been collected in chapbooks from Blood Pudding Press and Tilt Press and has been published in or is forthcoming from numerous literary journals including New South, RHINO, Arsenic Lobster, and Dusie. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she edits Hyacinth Girl Press.
