Shame

is a leggy butcher brooch. A cramp shackle
mash bone. Today, I sat alone in my cubicle,
and char lashed every scrape shred since age
seven. I’m sorry, Ms. Sockalow. I didn’t know
hound grot got the bumper hole stain reel. Shame, you
copper rank torch trumpet. Bald rash like swamp
soap. My friend left her husband seven years ago;
she says she can’t rip shorn a club gap without mug
fanging all the grime she spent on their alabaster bomb
screed. She feels ice slap floe. A real rink weasel. Hammer ramp
and squirm. Like all women, she has been taught to
eat shit every day, to carry around the weight of acrid ink gripe,
a bulbous throat widow, a sour green gag pole. My sister
calls it all bull shark, but I’ve watched her cram it
down her own brash bucket from tank to toad. She sham
wheels the bat scream with the best of us.
Oh shame, you roof rail flog roast. A real scrape
of screw. A rag horn, a glue gorge, a rust volt. That
pucker of palaver. Rage-glad nonsense.

ξ

Author’s note: This poem is indebted to Heather Havrilesky's work on shame.

Vivian Davis is a writer from Virginia. She holds a PhD in English literature from UCLA. This is her first published poem.