4 posts tagged “incest”

horse girl

gallop the blacktop

sizzle pop heat

whinny

snort

neigh

They do not know

I am Horse Girl

part potent roan

part shy onion-skin

slip of girl

my withers soft furred

my breasts

small peaches

unripe-pink

do not pick them yet

father does not heed

my warning

Lucy Simpson

Seattle 5/2008

Donkey Skin - Man's Coat (Work in Progress, based on Donkey Skin Tale in Andrew Lang's Fairy Book, where a father tries to marry his adopted daughter)

Donkey Skin - Man's Coat

(for my husband, Michael)

The mother dies or is absent

Maybe she drinks jug after jug

of cheapest table wine

The daughter hides in her royal chamber

cloistered in silk bed clothes

the curtains drawn

or perhaps she sits in her closet

pretending to be Amelia Earhart

in the darkness, seeing sky

The mother is laid in a grave fresh

or stops bathing

to avoid his loathsome touch

The daughter is fresh in morning

in black hat and dress

or perhaps fresh as morning in cotton

Her father weds her, bad as the Bay of Biscay

With old man ice hands he probes

to find his own boy self, lanky and pale

wedded to his own gray father

once upon the time

when he held innocence like an egg

Thus a chain of souls goes back to Lot

in certain families

a rank disease, tenacious as Virginia Creeper

The daughter, apoplectic

unable to move marmoreal limbs

or to speak

Even her own name

is a Shibboleth she cannot pronounce

gravel on her tongue

She is to blame

for her hair was unbound

for she slept naked at nine

like a white fleshen arrow

She skins a donkey

wraps herself in putrefaction

wearing death and ferocity.

Maybe she shaves her head and dons

her fathers old wool coat

with its moth balls

and is called sir or beast in 7-11

She hides herself

till one comes with courage

reaching fingers through the hide's opening

to translate her snarls and growls

to poetry

and lead her naked to the waters

Lucy Simpson

Seattle

5/2008

Daddy Erl King

My Daddy was the Erl King

with skin white as birch

and nipples of withered berries

His eyes were like ice floes

in his death's head

calm and cold

yet hot as gas flames

The Erl King

liked young pretties

to sit upon his knee

to rock upon his rod

which was like a hook

and we the fishes

he ate with his smile

rows of jagged white stones

and his hands

had veins like spiders

scurrying the tree-bark

No one knew my Daddy

was the Erl King

but I knew

from the mark upon me

placed by his very hand

I had sold myself

my breasts like nectarines

and my tender mound

for a nod of his head

some sign

to show that I existed

in the winter forest

of his cold world

Lucy Simpson

Seattle

6/14/2007

Sleeping Beauty

sleep sleep
said mother

we shall all sleep
so no one shall know
we ever lived

or laughed
or howled our misery
in cold stone halls

sleep
the servants shall sleep
and no one shall ever
know you

the child shall sleep
the dog shall sleep
no barking tales tell

lie still girl
your father loved
you all too well

the spindle
the needle
the opiate

her head nodding above
her pig snore
drunken breath

sleep took me
and inside a baby
gestates a hundred years

this child of my father's
sin writ in my skin

bone joining bone
growing weighted
the belly tumulus 

if you find me
my midwife
pray deliver me 
of this burden

Lucy Simpson
Seattle
11/23/2007