Yesterday
by Betsy Andrews

the bodies of two women were found
in the trunk of a car in Canarsie.
Curled between a crowbar and the donut-sized spare,
they were placid, but for their open eyes,
almost like children asleep.
No lacerations, no black-and-blue bruises,
no scratches on their backs and breasts,
no thumb-sized welts on their inner thighs,
no blood in their hair, no broken bones,
no torn vaginas, no clothes were found.
The paper reported, on page forty-five,
the cops recorded the cause of death: Unknown.

I read this last night before falling asleep.
I was scratching my itchy
crotch and catching up with the news.
I dreamt I was spreading my legs at a twenty-four hour
carwash and clinic, my feet in stirrups
bolted to the hood of a Rolls Royce
where the flying lady should have been.
The gynecologist of my dreams was driving the car.
He told me that the discharge I had in my underpants
yesterday, and my itchy crotch,
were symptoms in women who, when little girls,
had fathers who played with their pussies.
"So," I said to my doctor/chauffeur,
"now I have proof he abused me."
"Take off your clothes and climb into the trunk,"
he replied, "I'll commence with the treatment."

I awoke in the shadowed box of our bed,
a mattress flopped on a press-wood shelf
in a four-by-five-by-six foot crawlspace
scooped out beneath the closets, knowing
I had a yeast infection and that
this dream was not memory
exactly.

On weekends I'd have to help my father tinker
with one of his antique cars. I'd
hold the flashlight under the hood
and try not to hand him the wrong wrench or hesitate
Quickly Quickly
in handing him the right one.
He would toy around with it awhile.
Then he'd make me wax it.
At night he never entered my room
but I still didn't feel like my bed was my own.
Encapsuled by the scrape of his snore,
like a sharp thing against metal,
I lay awake and waited for
his rage to drive the next day.

Today, although he died this year
in his Mercedes Benz on the turnpike--
he was drunk and had called to holler at me
on his cellular phone; in his last moment of
screaming, I couldn't distinguish anger from fear--
in the whitewashed sheetrock walls of our bed,
in the cramped morning, he's here.
We lie in our box, our pussies
blocked by large invisible hands, and
know more about causes of death amongst women
than the cops will ever bother to learn.

Tomorrow, we should get up early,
crawl from this hole we sleep in.
We should pile into the last car he gave me--
a 1984 Mercury Cougar with balding tires,
spotted with rust. We should drive it
to a junkyard and scrap the parts for cash.
We should buy a sofabed for the living room.
We should fuck each other in it so that
tomorrow night I'll dream that we're flying
steering by radar kept in our cunts,
spreading eagle over the wreck
of a vintage German sedan on the turnpike.
And from the air we'll be able to see that its trunk,
thrown ajar by the impact, is empty.

Betsy's Chapbooks are available:

She-Devil (Sardines Press, 2003): sardinespress@mac.com
New Jersey (Furniture Press, 2004): furniture_press@graffiti.net
In Trouble/C-3 (flipbook with Bruce Andrews, Boog Press, 2004): editor@boogcity.com

Betsy can be reached at: betsyandrews@yahoo.com