Legs Like Cigarettes

Have you ever noticed how
all the girls have
legs like cigarettes,
and hair like ribbons
strangling their necks?

Their arms like matchsticks
waiting to start a fire;
the flames wanting to lick
at the flesh stretched
over their praying fingertips.

Those hips, oh those hips,
sit so gently on either side of
nothingness, so delicate
and virginal, laughing at the men
who all want to snap them, cut

beneath that skin and find
some pleasure, an ecstasy
of control and a blinding,
perverted sickness as the child’s
scream is muffled in the binding.

February 2012