Growing Up Without Women

Always an imbalance
of mortification and bliss,
perfect by standards of ignorance.
I remember
wearing no underwear.
I remember
liking to be naked with others.
Of course it was childish.

My parents had no other daughters,
And my mother no sisters,
My father no brothers in a family of seven.
Women, outsiders.

I liked kissing.
I kissed boys and girls.
I touched them too.
I never touched myself.
I became invisible and untouchable
inside myself.
My period started in the summer.
A missionary wife bought me ice cream.
I was ten?
I was eleven?
I was shown pornography, too,
Asked for sex when I was ten,
offered money,
Fingered when I was sixteen.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen:
Love stories of sad, lost women,
and strong, resilient Christian men.
No sexuality, just gender.
No reality and no education.

Jezebel Day

Purple is the color I choose to wear
This day: a birdhouse day.
This day
My brother walks me away.

The last thing my dad gives me,
The only strand
Of things he gives me--
Aside from explanations and excuses
Since I have became a woman--
Is a perfect line
Of pretty, round, soft-looking things.

But my pearl is purple
Since I have become a woman.

It is gorgeous,
A whole world of round and deep,
Hard alternating with soft.
My pearl loves touch,
Belongs to me,
Belongs to my body,
Buoyant and lustrous,
Fleshy and pounding purple.

When it was white and pink
It was hidden.
It was secret and misrepresented.
Then it was black and blue.
And blue, and blue and blue.

Then I discovered it.
My pearl is purple.
It belongs to me,
To my body,
This day and every day.