A mere rib that shrinks and grays
and the barbed-wire hair
that was once a pre-bunny

titanium blond, middle-class
to her fingerprints.
Cushioned now, passive as a sofa,

she can hardly speak, cannot
even die though the body is dead,
the womb is open, the dances

forever put in storage.
She sewed up the gaps in her life
with a gasp that shut out

the seethes and the swells
of the spasming nerve,
the strung-together flesh

and wore the mantle of a lady
like a straight jacket.
Who speaks out of her mouth

with its fumes and its roar
as only a mad child would howl?
She carries her revenge in her throat.