(from a song)Perhaps I was born kneeling,born coughing on the long winter,born expecting the kiss of mercy,born with a passion for quicknessand yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockadeor taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,not to expect, to plant my fires undergroundwhere none but the dolls, perfect and awful,could be whispered to or laid down to die.
Now that I have written many words,and let out so many loves, for so many,and been altogether what I always was—a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,these days,and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutelythat I would rather die than lookinto its face?
I kneel once more,in case mercy should comein the nick of time.
