An undercut menace: my charm might slink  
around your chaste-white and gritted teeth.  
I’ll eat you. I’m from the under-city  

and I know you’d pay to watch me lift heavy  
things. Depression Blonde with palm throttling  
a cremaster reflex, seesawing.  

I don’t care what my natural color was.  
I jettisoned my “natural” face;  
there’s an authenticity to artifice.  

I blunt my bangs like a strawberry slice,  
LET THE WORLD EAT tattooed across a cheek.  
My delicate braid and the stars’ braid  

interlaced: you soak through this fishnet plait.  
Everyone should get to be someone’s dream.  
I’m not without a romantic streak,  

goddammit. I want to be called beautiful,  
a blossom in the thick wave of your wet sleep.  

My love comes machine-set in brass casing.  
My love is workmanlike: every small and blessed  
pleasure that falls my way, I grip two-handed,  

I get the hook in. I have never lacked  
intensity, twisting or skipping rope  
down along the arms of the factory  

or raving under piston systems surging.  
All the blood I’ve given to spinning metal  
could fill a nice hotel’s swimming pool.  

If I could, I would boil my hands in flowers.  
Every song is dedicated to  
babies who came feet first; they look just like me.