Katey Funderburgh

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.