Some more prose poetry:
CLAUDIA CORTESE
Dear Claudia—
I don’t know why you made a broken girl. I bury glass in the moonlight, eat Oreos at midnight, dream my skin abuzz with knives. Give me red hair, tits spry as sprites. Make me a Siren on the riverbank, bewitching boys with my liquid song. I’d scissor around them, take what’s mine. When you said I dreamt my father ****ed me, did you imagine your own father rocking above you? It’s true, I hate my belly fat, hide behind the spruce in gym class, but you don’t know why, Claudia. You think I feed worms to Mabel, tell her about the six-pack rings that strangle sea turtles, because I hate her. To love is to suffer, and to suffer is to give yourself to this world. The sun-freckled oak will blacken, night rotting its branches, and this I swear—if you write what happened to me beneath the unlit porch-light, I will wrap your veins around your throat.
Regards,
Lucy
AND THE FOLLOW UP:
CLAUDIA CORTESE
Lucy,
I’ve shorn the doll’s hair, sprinkled the strands on your bed. I know what you crave—welts on the wrist, a punishment, a cry. You need me to live, and I need you to feel. When I wrote you slept in a box, a box within a box, I meant we all need touch and more touch. There’s a razor in the peach, and your sister plants teeth beneath your bed. Stitch those images to your eyes because only time will tell who’s the wolf at your window—if his strings of saliva will bless or burn you. When I said you hoped your father wouldn’t hear the Oreos crunch in your mouth, I meant to say the body remembers woodsmoke and barns, the insects buzzing above you. The cypress is blue-veined and beautiful—your ticket out of this girl-forsaken town.
Love,
Claudia
__________________
Split the Lark-- and you'll find the Music - Emily Dickinson
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