pronged attack, on your body, in you, on your brain, in you;
on freedom, on memory; you might as well bury yourself in
the backyard, or throw yourself in a trash can, you’re like
some dumb cat or dog that got hit by a car, run over and died;
only they let the shells o f dead girls walk around because hell it
makes no difference to them if what they stick it in is living or
dead; w hat’s left, darling, is fine, according to the formula, a
girl frail and female, a skeleton with a fleshy pudendum, ready
to serve, these girls are ghosts, did you see, did you notice,
where are they, w hy ain’t they here, present, on earth, why
can’t you find them even if you look for them in the light, how
come they don’t know anything or do anything, how come
they ain’t anything, how come they are shaking and flitting
around and apologizing and begging and afraid and drugged
and stupid even if they are smart; how come they are comatose
even when they’re awake? He pushes it in, she pushes it out, a
dead spot in the brain marks the spot, there’s a teeny little
cemetery in her brain, lots o f torched spots, suttee; we bleed
both ends, literal, little strokes every time there’s a rape, time
gone, hours or days or weeks, words gone, self gone, memory
wiped out, severely impaired; I cannot remember— how do
you
exist
? The skills, the tricks; tie your shoes; wrap ropes
around your heart, or was it your wrists; or was it ankles;
neck; I’d make a list if I could remember; I’d memorize the list
i f someone else would write it down; or I try, I scribble big
letters, confused, misspelled, on the page; or I look at the
words, meaningless, and draw a blank; I make a list,
misspelled words signifying I don’t remember what; or I draw
a picture, I use crayons, o f what? I try to say what I try to
remember; the skills, the tricks, language, yesterday. There
are little rape strokes, erased places in the brain, eruptions o f
blood, explosions, like geysers, it’s flooded, places on the
brain, blood’s acidic, did you ever sit in a pool o f your own
blood, it wears the skin o ff you, chafes, irritates, the skin peels
off; so too in the brain, the skin peels off; I’ve been there, a
poor, dear, quiet thing, naked like a baby, in a river o f blood,
mine, curled up; fetal, as if m y mama took me back. There’s
wounds and you sit in the blood. Why can’t I remember? I am
a stroke victim, a shadow in the night, invisible in the night, a
ghostly thing, in the night, amnesiac, wandering, in the night,
not out to whore, just what’s left, the remains, on the stroll;
taking a walk, pastoral, romantic, an innocent walk, lost in
memories, lost in fog, lost in dark; having forgotten; but I got
muscles packed with memory; hard, thick, solid, from the
positions reenacted, down on m y knees, down on m y back; I
got memories packed in m y bones, because m y brain don’t
make distinctions no more; can’t tell him from him from him;
I have an intuitive dread; o f him and him and him; there’s a
heightened anxiety; I’m a nervous girl, Victorian nerves,
strain, a delicate constitution in the sense that m y brain is frail,
pale; but m y muscles is packed, it’s adrenaline, from fear;
there’s a counterproductive side to creating too much fear, it’s
a meta-amphetamine, it’s meta-speed, it’s meta-coke, it’s
more testosterone than thou, I got a body packed with rage,
you ever seen rage all stored up like a treasure in the body o f a
woman? I don’t need no full capacity brain, as you so
eloquently have insisted; I got sunstrokes in my head, enough
daylight to carry me through any darkness, I am lit up from
inside, a bursting sun; brain light. I am a citizen o f the night,
on a stroll, no dark places keep secrets from me, I am drawn to
them by a secret radiance, the light that emanates from the
human heart, some poor bum, a poor man, poor fucking
drunk somewhere in the shadows hiding his poor drunk heart
in the dark, but I find him, I see the pure light o f his pure heart,
I find him, some asshole, a vagrant, clutching his bottle, and I
like them big, I like them hairy, their skin’s red and bulbous,
all swelled from drinking, they’re mean, they’d kill you for the
fucking bottle they’re clutching to them, sometimes they got
it buried under them, and they’re curled up on cardboard or
newspapers on the street, all secure in the shadows, manly
men, behind garbage cans, hidden in the dark; but the light in
them reaches out to the light in me, my brothers, myself, I
pick on men at least twice my size, I like them with fine
shoulders, wide, real men, I like them six feet or more, I like
them vicious, I pick them big and mean, the danger psyches
me up but what I appreciate is their surprise, which is absolute,
their astonishment, which invigorates me; how easy it is to
make them eat shit; they will always underestimate me,
always, from which I enunciate the political principle, Alw ays
pick on men at least twice your size. This is the value o f
practice as opposed to theory; they’re so easy; so arrogant; so
used to the world always being the w ay they thought it was.
The small ones are harder. The small ones have to learn to
fight early and take nothing for granted, the small, w iry ones
you cannot surprise; when I am a master I will take on the
small, w iry ones; or assign them to someone else, maybe
someone who can step on them, a real tall girl who would get
something out o f it by just treating them like bugs; but now I
take the big ones, and I fucking smash their faces in; I kick
them; I hit them; I kick them blind; I like smashing their faces
in with one kick, I like dancing on their chests, their rheumy
old chests, with my toes, big, swinging kicks, and I like one
big one between the legs, for the sake o f form and symbolism,
to pay my respects to content as such, action informed by the
imperatives o f literature. Sometimes they got knives or
bottles, they’re fast, they’re good, but they are fucking drunk
and all sprawled out, and I like smashing the bottles into their
fucking faces and I like taking the knives, for my collection; I
like knives. I find them drunk and lying down and I hurt them
and I run; and I fucking don’t care about fair; discuss fair at the
U . N .; vote on it; from which I enunciate another political
principle, It is obscene for a girl to think about fair. Every girl
needs a man, gets an itch, the nights are long, I’m restless, it’s
not natural for a girl to be alone, without a man; instead o f
locking the windows and locking the doors and waiting for
one to crawl in I go out to find him; not ladylike but selfdetermining, another girl for choice; a girl needs someone big and strong, a macho man, a streetwise, street tough, street