Girlhood
called woman before my first period a want for dinner a knowing that I would make something worth consuming beating the chicken breast with the back of the biggest spoon I could find like my mother taught break the muscle soft and burn unpink fork and knife to mouth drooling good work good woman gratitude a too tender palm to my head still girl salted as babytears my hairpins stuck in rows against my crowning the neighborhood boys watching as their fathers soured my girl their eyes like buttermilk dripping from my head to my navel crest of me late to break could they smell my rawness like my own father did as I stood in the mirror locked cell of his trailer park bathroom the bed I shared with my sister flipped back into a table claw marks on my thighs little blood freckles I feared I ruined myself the dinner yes the backhand was purpled beautiful enough to take just some of the girl from me blood slipping like tears down cheeks I had already bruised slipping between my legs taught womanhood is a beating iron river guzzling down throats filling stomach abscesses absent as if instead my bobby pins fit perfect through my iris never a good body displayed on the bedtable on the sidewalk never sleeping through my father’s steps tossing the trailer like a boat hunger that beamed refrigerator light across my sister it wasn’t her blood on the sheets it was mine mine I’m the woman mine
Katey Funderburgh is an emerging poet from Colorado. She is a current MFA Poetry student at George Mason University. When she isn't toiling over poems, Katey can be found laying in the sun with her cat, Thistle.