Incubus

My former boyfriend held my fighting fingers
as he ran his buzzer through my forest.
The soft hair fell like ash, black wisps floating
from between my thighs and onto dusty steps;

yet, trimming was not enough of a sacrifice
for him, and so I sat in the bathtub, slicing
away the uneven remnants of my Eden,
now a child’s garden, or a scalped peach.

Your coochie’s as smooth as a baby’s bottom,
He said, touching me. I’m going to eat you.

In my womanhood’s white coffin, I sat, crying
over my burning vagina’s new name,
its desert gleaming with water like the tears
that coat my cheeks when night falls,
and I’m twelve again, fearing vampires.

Copyright Xiomara A. Maldonado 2008

Poet Timothy Donnelly's comments on me and "Incubus"
Xiomara Maldonado is an ambitious, forceful, outspoken poet with a fine sense of form, pacing, and dramatic moment. Particularly memorable is the poem "Incubus," which ventures into daring territory but manages to do so with great artistry and insight. Its complex portrait of sexual objectification and infantilization suggests the speaker's own bewildered complicity in the dramatic event at the heart of the poem, while the description of the other in the poem as her former boyfriend (italics mine) suggests that the speaker, strengthened, has found the wisdom to move on. I’m also fond of the poet’s wide-ranging allusiveness - it makes for an interesting counterpoint to her exuberance and street smarts.