Cait Weiss Orcutt
ADORO TE DESTRUCTION
O taffeta lip, ripped pink C.: combat boots, babydoll revolted, you who ate a heart
& lived; to you I knot my windpipe singing Make Me Over. I mean it.
Change me out of my body & into a punk rock star. Give me a heroin addict to
love. Grunge up lashes until they crud out my eyes. I am feeling, feeling everything wrong.
Saint of a sickness I am only beginning to know, release me to bottles, pills,
broken bell jars. I swear I believe every note Hole has sung. Somewhere past Hollywood,
I lie fat in the Valley, Discman drugged, ear/nose/brain snorting every line you can spare.
O Gross Girl, protect me. Ensure no walks home ripped through pantyhose,
gashed & gathered under boughs or stained white sheets keeping quiet. Hide me from 1
in 3 date rapes & ratios. From having to take back the night as if it were not once a
blanket I threw round my feet.
O taffeta lip, ripped pink C.: combat boots, babydoll revolted, you who ate a heart
& lived; to you I knot my windpipe singing Make Me Over. I mean it.
Change me out of my body & into a punk rock star. Give me a heroin addict to
love. Grunge up lashes until they crud out my eyes. I am feeling, feeling everything wrong.
Saint of a sickness I am only beginning to know, release me to bottles, pills,
broken bell jars. I swear I believe every note Hole has sung. Somewhere past Hollywood,
I lie fat in the Valley, Discman drugged, ear/nose/brain snorting every line you can spare.
O Gross Girl, protect me. Ensure no walks home ripped through pantyhose,
gashed & gathered under boughs or stained white sheets keeping quiet. Hide me from 1
in 3 date rapes & ratios. From having to take back the night as if it were not once a
blanket I threw round my feet.
ADORO TE RAGING
O femme-syllabic, spark the sliver of me that senses down on you in a theater means more
than sticky floors & movie seats.
Provide weaponry for the amour/abuse I may 1 day get to feel. Let me believe irony isn’t
growing into the same drunk as my mother but a spoon when all you need is a knife.
Alanis, the boys don’t want me. Alanis, I have 2 hands open to the sky. Alanis, I am alone
& you are running your voice like chapped lips on my neck.
Saint of not quite MTV Sexy, of long-faced longing, scorned woman scream, tell me I
will suffer your way. I will be loved so hard I’ll want to make my lover bleed when he turns
(as he will turn) away.
O I am 13 &, to love songs, unbroken. Give me a reason the world understands so I can
spill into rage without question. I have heartbreak already, so give me a lover. Take back
the mother in a locked ward. The father paddling far out to sea.
Alanis, I too am fluent in mourning. Teach me rage that bursts from me like starlings.
Teach me to fledge out what claws at my cage.
O femme-syllabic, spark the sliver of me that senses down on you in a theater means more
than sticky floors & movie seats.
Provide weaponry for the amour/abuse I may 1 day get to feel. Let me believe irony isn’t
growing into the same drunk as my mother but a spoon when all you need is a knife.
Alanis, the boys don’t want me. Alanis, I have 2 hands open to the sky. Alanis, I am alone
& you are running your voice like chapped lips on my neck.
Saint of not quite MTV Sexy, of long-faced longing, scorned woman scream, tell me I
will suffer your way. I will be loved so hard I’ll want to make my lover bleed when he turns
(as he will turn) away.
O I am 13 &, to love songs, unbroken. Give me a reason the world understands so I can
spill into rage without question. I have heartbreak already, so give me a lover. Take back
the mother in a locked ward. The father paddling far out to sea.
Alanis, I too am fluent in mourning. Teach me rage that bursts from me like starlings.
Teach me to fledge out what claws at my cage.
CAIT WEISS ORCUTT: Winner of the Zone 3 First Book Award judged by Douglas Kearney, Cait’s work has been published in Boston Review, Chautauqua, FIELD, Prelude, and more. The founder of the Writers Guild Community Creative Writing Workshops in Columbus, Ohio, and a former workshop leader at New York Writers Coalition, Cait now teaches through the University of Houston, Inprint and Writers in the Schools. She is the recipient of an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor/MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship. Her first book, VALLEYSPEAK, came out this November. www.caitweissorcutt.com