OPEN-BRAIN SURGERY

una dama del sol

baby girl with her knees black

rosary beads strung through her hair like barrettes

with the holy ghost stretching through her spine and

a psalm resting in her back pocket

she can say el padre nuestro backwards&forwards ave maria beforemeals aftermeals las oraciónes del angeles before she goes to sleep

handing her soul off to God's little helpers before the world wakes: she

talks to God before the flowers do, each morning,

but you've got her fucked up if you think she's joining the convent. nobody listens to tejano in the convent.

or

baby girl with her teeth crooked, because diamonds aren't forever and neither are braces.

there's a mile of black hole space in the middle. says she's gonna close it up soon, soon as she gets her first check. working hard at the pharmacy a block from school. but she won't, because her mama's car's still broken, and the world will not turn until it is fixed, too.

or

baby girl with no teeth or knees at all. baby girl as a barbie doll, baby girl as

string

baby girl twisting herself into a bow, or a heart, into a different woman completely, is this what he wanted? you think he'll like my hair like this? except it's

hard to look beautiful when you traded your

eyes for his phone number (557-3427, 555-3427, he said he's gonna call me every day!)

or

baby girl when she's singing a hymn she forgot the words to

filling in pauses with yes lords and amens and it's too hot in this damn church, open the windows, father—

before catapulting out the window

using her headband as a slingshot.

an escape from the fires of hell.

or

baby girl torn apart

baby girl

when she's split herself into halves. one for mama, the chubbier half, the one that opens her mouth when she brings out plates of arroz y frijoles and tall glasses of pink lemonade, the half that doesn't feed the napkin, doesn't burn the food with fire in the pit of her stomach —

another half that cries during the sunday service because she knows the pastor is talking to her, even if she hasn't had a divorce or slept around with foreign godmen or sold her soul to

rap music and television —

another half that cut her hair with a pair of kitchen scissors one day after school and ripped off her own eyebrows because he said it's cute, the half that goes to work when she remembers and dies a couple times during every break, resuscitated only by the chime of the bells at the front door and the sound of money being stolen from the cashier by phantom hands

or

baby girl as a fist through his face. a verbal bullet brought his aorta. give him his own mile wide black hole. give him what he gives you.

or

baby girl when she's lapping up all the blood before it even touches the floor. i'm sorry, i didn't mean to hurt you. look, baby, my eyebrows —

or

baby girl with the marker

drawing her eyebrows back on, filling in the space between her teeth, making room for food inside by taking out

a pulsating heart,

a plastic white fork straight through it

or

baby girl with her knees pale as day and

the people clinging to the cooler sides of hell

baby girl sour-mouthed

bitter

with a steel jaw and interim organs that

worked sometimes, if you banged them

hard enough 

—

i wrote this in the wee hours of the night can you tell?