my name is
Ophelia
and I’ve always had
a thing for men with
an extra finger on their left
hand I think this is because
I miss
one finger and there-
for I feel that a man with
six fingers on his
left hand would fulfill me and
break all the barriers and
whatnot with that
extra finger
but
honestly who would want
a chick with just
nine fingers and
not ten which is actually
the ideal the idial the idiot
who says come on
baby let’s swing because
the galaxy is sleeping
in your eyes and
the stars are
the skin of your body
split in
millions of pieces all across
the sky like a mothers
skin around
the sleeping baby

I was dancing
like mad through
the drunken
milky way honey
day streets with bad poetry
on my scalp and
dry tear ducts in
my eyes and empty
shots and burnt babies
in my belly. I bleed with
them I walk across
dead bodies for them and I
split oceans for them. I feed
them and I
kill them. Shepard-like and burning
on the top of the hill.
A girl dressed in negro-white and
black and blue and all broken
bones  and
a broke
heart

While doing this I eventually
start thinking of
poetry and motherhood.
I am
hungry now I need to
find myself a
world to devour. I am Ophelia and
I’m lying on the bottom of
a bottomless pond looking up at the
surface and trying to make
out shapes there, the shape of
the world circling mysteriously
naked catching glimpses of
my eyes and dreaming of
disasters so that when I
wake up it will
swim closer and come to me
with love and cookies but
no cookies for
Ophelia, please, don’t feed
the animals, don’t feed
the animals
their stomachs
might fill and they will
be satis-
fied

dance in
delirium and put your
flaccid hands in the
air call upon all angels and
share your cell share
your cells and cut yourselves
up go, go, dancing like
a nun who just found
the devil who just found
the whores of Babylon beautiful
and with
Shakespearian smiles like
the sun like a dying flower so
beautiful it could
break anytime it could
break anytime and it
floats closer and it tastes
like milk and honey
it tastes like baby and
holy water. I call all
angels and say
come here come here
but they they won’t come
they just hang up on me and
I call all upon them
again, all eleven-fingered and
bloodied, broke and blank
their suits neatly pressed
and wrinkled
their shirts ironed to oblivion and
I look at them from behind
masks made of stars and
clouds and everything
proud burning burning like
tambourine notes along the
shores of starry-eyed countries
too many stripes too many
smiths and too many ways to
fill a car with people
and
crash it too many reasons
to die too many reasons
to live to die to laugh to love
and all of a sudden the
people raise a fingers and
wave it in the wind like an
antenna to the God and
they ask
am I OK?
am I OK?
he sits, catatonically and
with a full bladder he thinks
fuck, fuck
I should’ve gone before
I should’ve gone before
And he says ‘yeah yeah whatever’ because
he has better things to do you have
better things to do I have
better things to do when I
stand in the bathroom, screaming
hey mister tambourine man!
play a song for me and for me
only and I’ll
be following you, I always
follow somebody even
though I stand in the
door way naked and reborn in
labor dancing like
a girl smelling
of French powder and
cheap perfume calling on all
angels and the honeys made
of jokes and charades I lay
close to the heart of the
sun and
I listen,
dragging one
finger along the shore of his
body I love him as if
he was a woman eleven fingered
and with three hands chewing on
antihistamines and afros
in the night
I push my hair away and play
every tune on a sad guitar but
I can’t reach the chords because
I’ve got nine fingers and

no head. no angel head. no hipsters.
no bloody valentines and no
drunk kids picturing the sky
naked from clouds sexy and
defying midnight eyed and curling around
my stupid neck my stupid skin
my stupid finger which, mind you,
actually exists and I
don’t need any eleven-fingered
boyfriends or men or jazz-players
to do their thing to me just
stand dark and dreamy
drowning in your own sweat and
master your swords and do
the revolution baby run down
my body like milk
and honey and clouds and
wombs and
everything proud

I say and run out into the
pitch black trembling streets screaming
I’M OPHELIA I’M OPHELIA DON’T
LET ME DOWN DON’T LET ME
DROWN but they just look at me
and whisper idiot idiot and go
back to paper work and labeling
themselves as fragile, as angels
with their halo askew
but I give them the
finger and go in from
behind and lay on the floor
I turn the stove on and
light every light and put the
telephone off its’ receiver and I
cut one finger off
and throw it out the
window and

walk
whatever direction it
points.