“Song of Myself” could just as easily be the Song of Everyone
wailing from bottom drawer Indiana windows

bloody nose broken de-spirited.

Mothers ravaged and beaten sing the days away in idle holyness.
“My stallion is here,” she says though she doesn’t smile
when her lover comes near.

Her red strangled eyes peer through ripped lace curtains
hanging in front of busted dollhouses and Barbie dolls: the earth good.
“I’m too afraid to scream,” the dished out fished out American woman says,

“And I too am
of the Body an
d the So
ul, heave
n and hell, w
oman and man.”

by Ryan Wilcox