dull, dirty, rusty knives cutting my labial lips or the edge o f a
rusty tin can and it’s inside me, his teeth reaching inside me
turning me inside out, the skin, he is pulling me open and he is
biting inside me and I’m thinking that pain is a river going
through me but there’s no words and pain isn’t a river, there’s
just one great scream past sound and my mind moves over, it
moves out o f m y head, I feel it escape, it runs away, it says no,
not this, no and it says you cannot but the man does and my
mind just fucking falls out o f my brains and I am past being
anything God can help anyway and He’s making the man
stronger, H e’s making the man happy, the man likes this, he is
liking this, and he is proud to be doing it so good like a good
lover, slow, one who lasts, one who takes time; and this is real;
this happened and this will last forever, because I am just
someone like anyone and there’s things too bad for me and I
didn’t know you could be lying flat, blue skin with blood from
the man with the knife, to find love again, someone cutting his
w ay into you; and I’m just someone and it’s just flesh down
there, tender flesh, somewhere you barely touch and you
w ouldn’t cut it or wound it; no one would; and I have pain all
over me but pain ain’t the word because there’s no word, I
have pain on me like it’s my skin but pain ain’t the word and it
isn’t m y skin, blue with red. I’m just some bleeding thing cut
up on the floor, a pile o f something someone left like garbage,
some slaughtered animal that got sliced and sucked and a man
put his dick in it and then it didn’t matter if the thing was still
warm or not because the essential killing had been done and it
was just a matter o f time; the thing would die; the longer it
took the worse it would be; which is true. He had a good time.
He did. He got up. He was friendly. He got dressed. I wasn’t
barely alive. I barely moaned or whispered or cried. I didn’t
move. He left. The gang was somewhere outside. He left the
door open, wide open, and it was going to be a hundred years
before I could crawl enough to close it. There was daylight
streaming in. It was tom orrow. T om orrow had finally come,,
a long tom orrow, an eternal tom orrow , I’m always here, the
girl lying here, can’t run, can’t crawl, where’s freedom now,
can’t move, can’t crawl, dear God, help me, someone, help
me, this is real, help me; please, help me. I hate God; for
making the pain; and making the man; and putting me here;
under them all; anyone that wants.
S E V E N
In 1969, 1970, 1971
(Age 22, 23, 24, 2$)
Yeah, I go somewhere else, a new country, not the fucking
U . S . A ., somewhere I never been, and I’m such a sweet genius
o f a girl that I marry a boy. N ot some trash bourgie; a sweet
boy w ho’d done time; I rescued him from jail once, I took all
my money and I gave it to some uniformed pig for him; a
hostage, they had kidnapped him, taken him out o f his bed and
out o f where he lived in handcuffs in the middle o f the night
and they kept him; I mean, he just fucking disappeared and it
was that he was locked up. They let me in the prison, the great
gray walls that are built so high and so cold you can’t help but
feel anyone in them is a tragic victim buried alive. You
w ouldn’t be right but that’s what you’d feel. Cold stone, a
washed-out gray. I was a child standing there, just a girl,
money in my hand, love in my heart, telling the guard I
wanted m y friend loose and had come to pay for him to go
now, with me; I felt like a child because the prison was so big
and so cold, it was the gray o f the Camden streets, only it was
standing up instead o f all spread out flat to the horizon, it was
the streets I grew up on rising high into the sky, with sharp
right angles, an angry rectangle o f pale gray stone, a washed-
out gray, opaque, hard, solid, cold, except it wasn’t broken or
crumbling— each wall was gray concrete, thick, the thickness
o f your forearm— well, if you see someone’s forearm up
someone’s ass you know how long, how thick it is, and I seen
these things, I traveled a hard road until now; not how a
gentleman’s forearm seems draped in a shirt but what it is i f it’s
in you— a human sense o f size, chilling enough to remember
precisely, a measurement o f space and pain; once the body
testifies, you know. It was cold gray stone, an austere
monument; not a castle or a palace or an old monastery or a
stone w inery in cool hills or archaic remains o f Druids or
Romans or anything like that; it was cold; stone cold; ju st a
stone cold prison outside o f time, high and nasty; and a girl
stands outside it holding all her money that she will ever have
in her cute little clenched fist, she’s giving it to the pigs for a
man; not her man; a man; a hero; a rebel; a resister; a
revolutionary; a boy against authority, against all shit. H e’s all
sweet inside, delicate, a tender one, and on the outside he is a
fighting boy with speed and wit, a street fighting boy, a
subversive; resourceful, ruthless, a paragon, not o f virtue but
o f freedom. Bom bs here and there, which I admire, property
not people; blow ing up sym bols o f oppression, monuments to
greed and exploitation, statues o f imperialists and w armongers; a boy brave enough to strike terror in the heart o f business as usual. I’m Andrea, I say to the guard as if it matters;
I have the money, see, here, I’ve come to get him out, he’s m y
friend, a kind, gentle, and decent boy, I say showing a moral
nature; I am trying to be a human being to the guard, I’m
always a pacifist at war with myself, I want to ignore the
uniform, the gun, inside there’s someone human, I want to act
human, be human, but how? I think about these things and I
find m yself trying; trying at strange times, in strange places,
for reconciliation, for recognition; I decide reciprocity must be
possible now, for instance, now standing at a guard booth at
the outermost concrete wall o f the concrete prison. Later,
when I am waiting for his release, I will be inside the concrete
building and all the guards and police and guns will disappear
as if it’s magic or a hallucination and I will wander the halls,
ju st wander, down in the cell blocks, all painted an oily brazen
white, the bars to the cells painted the same bright white— I
will wander; wander in the halls like a tourist looking around