As soon as the man says to the little girl, “I want to touch you,”, by Jeanine Walker

As soon as the man says to the little girl, “I want to touch you,”

            a saw stirs up its loud whine
            to separate the limbs of the tree
            from its trunk.

A car stereo begins playing
the entire soundtrack of Good Morning, Vietnam

and she hears “hot and wet” “hot and wet” —
“it’s nice if you’re with a lady”

                  and she feels the last, labored breath of Robin Williams
                        like a dull machete attempting to slice through the swamp grass
                                    as he suffocates himself
                                                outside his closet door

and all of the suicides inside of her
                                    lift their heads and eyes,
                        like turtles lined up alongside
a creek in which
                                    the bruised, naked torso
                                                of a woman floats by,
her breasts full of gravity, nipples staring off dully to either side
            as if she never in her entire life
                                                            saw anything that surprised her

            The man does not reach out to touch
                        the girl, though his intention
               is like the sheet pulled back
                           from the skin of that dead body —

there’s no stopping it now,
not the unfeeling hands that lift the cover

            nor the grief that will live
                forever in the blood        of the mother
                        who stands over her daughter’s torso, the roots of her severed limbs

not even able to speak the words

Yes, that’s her that’s her

Published