CORRINE YONCE STUDIOS
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    • archive >
      • What They Didn't Notice (Install)
      • Female Familial, 2019
      • drawings
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      • Hive Mind, 2013
  • PUBLIC
    • Longing is Just Our Word for Knowing
    • King Street Laundry
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    • For All My Emilys
    • Old North End Community Center Mural
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    • Public Projects Overview
    • The Holding Space Radio
  • Bio
    • On Housing & Community
  • SHOP
Life of Lice

Back when I believed in things like God and Good,

G’s like low church bells on my mouth’s pallet,

I told my friend, how beautiful it is that a family

of fleas might build their home on my head and he told me

to pray to God, muted breath collected on pillowcase 

as I asked God, why He made us so soft, baby skin 

mice, and them so hard? Lice women and children brood

thirsty and week, we hear nothing of Acts of Violence

Against Women, against me, day after day,

until Back in 2001 when I asked for my first knife

and the man who wasn’t my father laughed

and said “girl, you’d have to be a boy

scout for that.” Between Him and Him 

we good fleas hibernated for our couple 

months, day after day, with no food but the quiet;

dandelions trying to hold on to spring,

and I tell my sisters, their yellow, yielding faces,

At least flees stay together while they live 

on something much bigger

whereas the cuckoo is abandoned 

in a strangers nest, a mistake, unwanted, and maybe the mother 

could have pushed it from her womb, never asking 

for the imposter,baby birds, flightless, cotton heart beats shaking, 

breathy chests, like people but without limbs or mouths.

I wondered if they ever hear of a laws such as Violence

Against Women act, and that it could expire

when I glance at the bald spot on mother’s

head because her hair was torn from her skull,

taking Him for all that He Had.

And I wonder about the Independent Women Act

in a life punctuated by men who are not my father

and collected in blackened cheeks and aggressive cracks

in the wall, but we fleas need heads of hair, like back

when I sobbed on my bedroom floor and my mother 

stroked behind my ears, pillow-warm,

touch like lavender, whispering baby, 

its just for a little while, and my sisters and I,

we build our home in a stranger’s nest.

I look to her, broken skinned, and say we don’t need him

she nods, lipstick-caked smile blushing across bruises

hushing  just for now, spending 

her laughter to the phone, to him, you want this.

I ask why bother with Free Women  

Acts when a man who is not my friend

touches my baby bird sister, and asks for her to need

his head of hair, and she wants to say yes.

Words like Grab and Groin, the soft Gs

turn hard, the growls of curses clog my throat,

when my friend turns to me and says,

you want this.
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  • HOME
  • BODIES OF WORK
    • Never Good at Pretty (install)
    • Selected Works
    • ESTATE SALE
    • HOME IN WHAT REMAINS
    • Video Collage Poems
    • digital-journal
    • notebooks
    • archive >
      • What They Didn't Notice (Install)
      • Female Familial, 2019
      • drawings
      • life studies 2015-18
      • Selfies, 2014
      • Hive Mind, 2013
  • PUBLIC
    • Longing is Just Our Word for Knowing
    • King Street Laundry
    • BTV Bike Path Mosaic
    • For All My Emilys
    • Old North End Community Center Mural
    • Voices of Cambrian Rise
    • Voices of Home
    • Public Projects Overview
    • The Holding Space Radio
  • Bio
    • On Housing & Community
  • SHOP