Bleak Sisters

We were as bleak as sisters then,
the breaking ice made us free,
but we had to explain
trips to the gynecologist
aren’t hot dates
when they turn us on.
Our spoons were empty,
and we were tickled for the first time,
we thought we had a chance in hell.
We said our I love yous without glancing up
winced at those cold hands.
We were in a rape scene
I was the emperor
and you were my clothes
and you were the queen
and you were the castle.
Our glow was gone,
we thought about moving on

Every High School Cock

I was in high school
and every hairy cock I sucked
woke me up a little,
The boys were all birds of prey
and it was easy
to take them up on their offers,
But I got bored
and to cum was just to cum
after all,
My mom caught me one morning
masturbating on my knees
in my bedroom,
I never slept in that room again
without the aid
of a pill

Lone Range

I’ve spent a long time squeezing into small spaces
holding breath shallow so not to shake the bed.
It’s been a pattern of holding and halting
oppressive and vibrating locks of beating heart
waiting. I’ve spent a long time creeping down hallways
with guilt its own incrimination in salt secured
valleys. No recourse for innocence, I paid to find.
I spent a long hallway visiting a friend who never laughed
and braying at the sound of silence, I saw barriers.
Walls with flagrant invisibility and I’m surrounded.
Take not your breath into chambers, run like swallows of air.
Tell that joke again, the one about the war.

Christine Pemberton