BODY PARTS

She’s got a body that’s everywhere
Body parts to fit any landscape

She’s a nation, war-torn, with a man walking all over her
on the six o’clock news
He’s an American Goliath standing on a map of the world,
making a war accessible
“This is where it’s happening,” he says
standing on her navel
“They’re coming down from the mountains.”
(Even her secret hiding places, those tiny trails
through the woods,
are being ravaged )
He walks on
“We could bring American troops in here,” he says,
standing on her knee


A picture on the screen
of a child with no arms
of a man with one leg
of twelve year-old girls
strip-searched and raped
held down, penetrated
and sown by the enemy
“You’re mine,” says the soldier.”You’re conquered.”
His seed grows
She rips it from her belly
with her own hands
bloody and salted with tears.
“What do you want from me?!” she screams
“More land,” he answers

And when she cries,
this woman of body parts, like the earth ransacked
the tears only flow from one of her eyes
the one she’s been left with to cry from
a madwoman’s eye with the world in it
and fear looking out
Her left eye cries
a river of tears

She’s a tenement in the ghetto with her windows busted out
and torn curtains flapping, like bandages in the breeze
Her cunt, a crack palace-smoke-filled
with dreams by the score
burnt into ashes
She’s knee-deep in death, with an arm full of holes
and the Lord’s prayer in her veins
Thy will be done, Thy kingdom is come
wet and slick
And her body, the street, silver-edged like a switchblade
cutting the night into bite-sized pieces
She’s for sale, her body parts hollow
empty of wishing that there’s anywhere else to go

Her children are shipwrecked in the waters of Lethe
that place in hell, where lives are forgotten
and souls rent asunder
like a face in the mirror with one fist shattered
too many pieces to fit together again

She’s a lit slit of neon strip in the Las Vegas desert
a slot machine jackpot of possibility
a hot swollen clit, with a G-spot inside
They’re coming in droves, looking for it,the big score
Strip-mining her dry, as she glitters and writhes
side-winding her way through the Las Vegas night

She’s a flame-throwing, sword-swallowing, mirage of a woman
Her blood flowing down the boulevard like abundance itself
She’s the Red Sea parting
complete with fishes and multiplying loaves, there for the taking

She’s satisfaction guaranteed and topless tonight
with tassels on her teats,swinging this way and that
like planets rotating, out of sync, for ten cents a pop
while coins, like chains clanking, clinking---fall into cups

She’s big and round and packed solid like a fortress
with a wounded child inside
wearing three year-old shoes
a six year-old blue dress
and eight year-old panties
with the days of the week sewn on
And she doesn’t remember the days
that she lost
Where she put them
in the dollhouse she lived in
too tiny for words
curled up like a snail in a shell
in a box, in a drawer

And now she’s huge-a fat circus lady
with memories of Hiroshima and Chenobyl
Nagasaki and Bhopal, in the folds of her flesh
If you listen close, you hear children keening
like women wailing the dead

She’s the last breath taken by the last of its kind
Extinction--- a song never heard again
She’s the hour between night and dawn
when the earth stands still to mourn her loss
the decimation of whale wolf rhino
elephant eagle
of virgin forests, highly prized
slashed and burned
their body parts sold to the highest bidder

She’s a spider-woman, with eyes all around her head
looking to the past, present and future weaving her web of Fate
On the edge of a cliff, on one foot balanced
she’s one woman dancing, her arms to the sky
One woman dancing to the beat of the drum
at the heart of the earth
spiraling in, to gather her selves
her body parts together
Reclaiming her landscape


c.MarleneAzoulai1999