Victoria Mendoza caller
“Psalm of the Damsels"
We are split lips & bruised thighs.
Watch how we bare grins dripping
with our own blood-sparkling
cuspids. Our jaws unhinge
in the purest expression of
joy we know & wouldn’t you
love to hear our unburdened yelps.
Why shouldn’t we flaunt our brittle
recklessness? Even when handprint
bruises clasp our biceps, we still feel
the baptismal weight of our forest’s shadow.
Even then, when some god is tracking
our calves or bared shoulders or whatever
limb has caught his hummingbird gaze, we
are salivating over his fluttering jugular.
"AU in which I am Holy and Still”
dripping with the excess. Sheathed
in—near suffocating—that hallowed
fleshy cave. Scratching out the surface
with my own delicate shard of humanity
& my god—my own—the pain is days.
Months, really of flesh reknitting, but maybe
just a second. One breath to the next
and I am clawing past my sternum.
Ripping through my old ripened carcass.
You didn’t say that the rebirth would
rend me apart like the first night, no
like the apple dropped and bursting
outward with the sin of it all. But my
god—my Self — I become again
better this time.
