Claire the Virgin

all her life she’s waited for this 16 years of kissing cats and dogs
(she held a snake once passed to her at the petting zoo warm

and dry she didn’t let go until someone laughed and the other
girls looked away) she clutches horses between her thighs until

her clit wears out becomes a blistered hole at the center of her
she walks bowlegged and doesn’t understand the whispers

in Claire’s dreams she french kisses otters, tumbles underwater,
weaves and twitches between sodden weeds the leaves stroking

her like dead tongues she’s kissing a bamboo tree then biting it
another earthquake that night her parents glare at her as they

brace themselves in the doorway she sees the ghost of her
father’s penis swing inside his pale pajamas at the prom she

promises herself this is my night of nights the king of kings
gets drunk and pukes on her blue silk hem driving her home

he guns the car halfway up the sidewalk and whoops she decides
to do it herself with a hammer and a coyote or perhaps a mule deer

she sleeps under a thistle bush in the endless stand of pines behind
her house she brings home fleas poison ivy burns the shapes of

M and Y onto her breasts her dad catches her clambering out her
window to the roof calls her slut and nails her windows shut