Daphne Gottlieb

Daphne Gottlieb reads promiscuously around San Francisco and

is the 1996 Queer Poetry Slam Champ. She's also senior editor at

Research Magazine and can be reached at daphne@researchmag.com.

little pitchers have big mouths

that was the rumor around school anyway

don't know who started it or how they knew but

the way you know the things you know

you could tell by watching the way she walked

the way she didn't talk to any of us and

someone told me that they found her doing that,

sticking it where the pee comes out and

someone told me it was a candle but I also

heard it was a hairbrush and don't

argue with me, young lady, I'm doing this for your own

good doggy she said petting its ears throwing its balls

it was a female dog: a bitch and someone said

they heard someone looked through her shades and

saw it you know licking

where the hairs start to grow

it could have been true, she thought

though she'd never put her mind to it, to put her

dog in that position her mother told her

never to touch herself and that wouldn't be

it would be the dog

but there was that time she was just

pulling at her bathing suit down

so the boys couldn't see nothing and she

told her momma that but her mom still burned her hands

with cigarettes and that's how she knew the right thing

to do was spill candle wax from the dinner tapers

on the dog's paws and when someone told

her mother she got hit with a big

wooden salad spoon so hard

it broke in half and they didn't have salad for weeks

which was probably ok with her

she was probably getting enough

what with all of us putting vegetables

in her locker

oh what a cuke girl, they said

you could tell by the way she walked but I knew

because she wore glasses and you know

about that whole eyesight thing

and no one ever wanted to go over to

her house for dinner and she was

weird anyway the way she wouldn't

throw those damn zucchini out

just bring them home

scrape out the seeds and plant them

in the yard marked with

candles and broken spoons stuck in the earth and

her father ripped the stakes out of the ground

mowed those tender greens down

week after week

yelling at her for ripping up the lawn

for acting like a freak for

eating the plants out of the ground

roots and all without washing the dog piss off

and he was right my daddy

would have beat the crop out of me and as

my momma always says

you've got to stop that stuff right there

nip it in the bud since from

little acorns big trees grow and my momma

says as ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Daphne Gottlieb