mother-daughter-girl

mother-daughter-girl goes dreaming

into the mouth of the lake, goes sunbathing

on the streets of the town past stick, weed,

newspaper, dead baby bird, needle.

mother-daughter-girl goes wishing

on a barbed wire tightrope, goes dancing

across the sky, goes bleeding, goes “spotlight!”,

goes crying like a real mother-daughter-bitch.

mother-daughter-girl goes award-winningly

into a man’s mouth, her blood on his teeth—

a man’s moan opening his throat up like freeway,

his tongue pit stop, his tongue pitting,

gutting, his tongue swallow stop.

mother-daughter-girl goes car-crashing,

brights blinding, head on collision,

glass shattering into his stomach.

mother-daughter-girl doesn’t make it out,

mother-daughter-girl does time in his lining,

hangs herself from his rib—it breaks.

mother-daughter-girl cuts her way out

with the broken rear view mirror.

mother-daughter-girl was pretty once,

in the background of someone else’s photo,

passing through—photo bombing, mass casualty,

drop dead gorgeous genocide—

but the motherfucker never red-room drowned it.

mother-daughter-girl was breathless,

was always wringing hands and twirling curls,

was always licking envelopes closed

so her boys had her taste on their fingers,

had to cut through it to get to her words.

mother-daughter-girl lost the key to her locket,

a pretty little mother-daughter-girl-thing stuck

wrapped around her neck, left hanging,

left choking, left suffocating, left breathless, left

underexposed.

mother-daughter-girl folded herself up

—little, pretty, tight—

and waited skin open to be delivered

to boy-god-man, went love letter crazy,

started seeing hearts above her eyes.

mother-daughter-girl goes reckless, goes vulnerable,

goes hungry gets eaten,

goes thirsty gets drank,

goes raging gets her blood poured

into mouth-lake-prison-locket-boy.

Cortaney Martin-Jones is a junior studying Creative Writing at USC. They are a Black lesbian from the south. She enjoys writing poetry, daydreaming, and sleeping excessively.

You can follow Cortaney on Instagram here.