April and Abril

At 16, we called ourselves the Triple A Express. Of course, no one ever rode the Angela, Abril, April train. We wanted to be like April: virginity lost at 13, first miscarriage by 14. Teenage Miscarriage Mamas; Next on Maury. Even though Abril woke up early on Saturday mornings to watch Ricky, Jenny, and Maury, she never really wanted to be an unwed mother. I’m sure Abril and April wear just as much make-up as ever although they’ve always had clear skin: Abril bronzed and April rosey. We lost touch. I remember being on my mother’s bathroom floor with April after we’d had a threesome. How my mother didn’t know we snuck 18 beers into my closet drove me nuts. On today’s Oprah, a woman blinded by divorce. When Abril left the bedroom, April and I started kissing. Before Abril came back, we stopped kissing because she might have been freaked out, or felt left out. Missing scene: April and I coaxed Abril to get naked, kiss us, lay in the bed. That night, April was crying as I was puking in my mother’s toilet. I couldn’t have been that quiet, saying between barfing, “This is so rock and roll; Motley Crue Behind the Music.” And April’s sobbing, saying something between panicked breaths about being abused, or neglected, or something else young girls are affected by; perhaps her anorexia, or her abortion. I was too drunk to be anything but obnoxious as Bjork’s voice vibrated the wall connecting the bathroom to my bedroom. How we both got from the bathroom back to the bedroom didn’t make much sense. Abril was left unconscious on the bed. The next day she said she felt pressured. That didn’t make much sense either. She said three fingers were too much because she was a virgin. I just wanted to be close to them. I wanted to feel the weight of a woman for the first time before I ever felt the weight of a man, just to be sure.

Rainforest

My canopied pussy
is a mystery to men
who can’t find the split:
fear of the feminine spreads
as hands get lost down my pants.
Unearthed is a thatch thicker than his.

Friends with Benefits

We had a deal. No cuddling. No terms of endearment. No possession. No tender words. Well, maybe Good head. Friends with benefits. It was half day; his mother worked until six. Still, I gave my first blow job on the checkerboard floor of his roach-infested closet. He was the dirtiest pop punk with the biggest sixteen-year-old dick. Although sex was the intended benefit, what I reaped was much different: friendship. Long phone conversations into late school nights: from family to sex to dreams to silly things. Free rides anywhere in a beat up 70s hand-me-down from his dad, a stick shift he could hardly drive. Someone to sit with at lunch, meet in the morning before class, go home and jam with after school. Company: a close warm body, a gruff hand in my hair, a contagious laugh, a shared cigarette. The blowjobs kept him coming. That afternoon in his closet, and thereafter, I stopped him from going down on me because my bush was bushy, and I thought of a story he told me about his friend PJ who reached inside panties to find a hairy peachfish and ran for the hills.

Little Cunt

Admittedly, I shouldn’t have flipped him
the bird as I changed lanes last minute, but that

was after he cut me off. I turned right; he go
pissed at my middle finger. The truck pulled

up alongside the passenger door. The young guy,
shirtless, tan, and on steroids, yelled into the open

window to my boyfriend beside me (like I
wasn’t even there): I wanna know why the fuck

that little cunt gave me the finger! I stared through
the thick windshield imagining a shattered jaw:

little cunt little cunt little cunt.

The way he followed us made me think
of the trucker traveling I-10 on the 4th of July

who peered in my window as he jerked off
against the setting sun. Outside the restaurant

built cooks tattooed with tear drops and more
names than a graveyard stood smoking. Reluctant,

he sped away. I thought of his girlfriend,
or any girl he’s fucked: his knuckles pressed

into the small of her back; his cock shoved
through her teeth; his bicep jerking her head as he says:

little cunt little cunt little cunt.