Eratio


 

 

 

The Vagina Girls

(revisiting a shitty Apache myth)

 

Aria Riding

 

 

 

 

1.  Little Vagina Girls

Kicking Monster is the father

Of myself and my three sisters.

We who take the form of women—

In reality, Vaginas. 

 

The only women in the world

Possessing of this orifice.

 

Four who fake the form of maidens,

Fathered by the Kicking Monster,

Walk on legs and speak with voices.

Bones and bodies hide our secret—

We are full Vagina Girls.

 

Lesser girls adorn our dwelling.

Buds of summer, soft with cobwebs.

Walls have eyes!  So do the ceilings.

Corners strewn with roses, pulsing

Talismans of pelt and petal,

Blooming fire to soothe and stoke us.

Tended from an age of trouble.

 

Here we live in aching comfort.

Cultivating hungers, lonely

Beauties listening for guests.

Mouths to teach the seekers chasing

Cravings which they cannot know.

 

 

 

2.  Trying Men

Rumor spread throughout the hillsides

Of the caves who walk like women,

Of the girls who shelter untouched

Orifices of dark promise.

 

Many men hunt crazed to find us.

Sisters of the sweet abysses,

Chasms famined for intrusion,

Legendary girls to fall in—

Pleasure’s deepened pinnacle.

 

Many men creep close to know us,

Wander into thorn-thick gardens,

Starve in caves they thought were women,

Faint away from echoed perfumes.

Never to be known again.

 

For our father, Kicking Monster,

Bares his feet and breaks our suitors,

Kicks intruders down the hillside,

Kicks men through our fertile doorway,

 

Pummeled past our fetid threshold,

Kicked to the Vagina Girls—

These are men not seen again.

 

 

 

3.  Killer of Enemies

Killer of Enemies vowed to slay us,

Flay our mystery to the marrow.

Still a boy, he longed for manhood,

Longed to wield the spear of heroes.

 

So, outwitting Kicking Monster,

Dodging fierce and clawsome footfalls,

Enemy-Killer snuck by nightfall

To the edge of inner sanctum.

He was spied, free yet of torment.

 

Enemy-Killer froze before us,

Stunned by our seductive beauty.

Flames spread quickly, quest consumed by

Arms of willow, hips of slipstream.

Ripe with shadow, firelight’s rivals—

Warmth to temper youth’s new blazing.

 

Enemy-Killer, fierce yet straining—

So near to our rare enchantments!

Yet resisted, strong as skull bone.

Fighting his own lust and nature.

 

Oh, we writhed in strangest craving!

Quite bewitched by his unmoving,

Weakening from unmet needing,

Bodies caught in cruel eclipses

Yet resisted, strong as jawbone.

 

 

 

4.  Showing of Answers

Killer-of-Enemies met our gazing.

Time was banished from these moments.

Half in haze, he bravely asked us:

 

_What has happened to the tribesmen

Who have vanished in your dwelling,

Seeking out the promised pleasures,

Never to return again?

 

Ah!  We slowed our undulating,

Answered proudly as our teeth shone:

 

_We have eaten all your brothers.

That is what we like to do!

To the deepest, we devour them.

What we need to live, we conquer.

Loving what we eat, we feast.

 

No one’s yet spoke their regret,

And you will be the next to love us.

 

Then he raged: _I don’t believe you!

Fragile women, made of water!

Open up your mouths and show me

Truthfulness in all your teasing.

 

So we split from spine to spirit,

Baring what he thought our lying.

Spreading fangs to show our spiral,

Mouths stretched wide to show our natures.

_See what we encompass, darling!

 

There were scenes of ancient peacetime—

Whirlpool ghostworlds, doomed with motion.

Children solving knots retangled,

Stains on white and hem-held dresses.

Serpents coughing fauns and hatchlings,

Harvest without help or hindrance,

Seeds in savage, virgin swampland.

Gourds to shake in wildest rhythm,

Stolen from the rooted mother.

Throats’ foreknowledged tones of quietness.

 

Even his beloved village,

Where he grew and roamed outside of—

Now in building, now in burning.

Bones of brothers, creatures.  Dancing

On his own grave, worms yet unfed.

 

Vacillation of the senses,

Turning motionless in darkness—

Space itself, and strands of matter

Held in mouthward palpitations,

Visions not to be recalled.

 

 

 

5.  Taking of Medicine

Killer-of-Enemies cried in terror:

_You misuse the earth’s vaginas!

You are mere annihilators,

World-dissolving temptresses.

 

_Sisters cruel from mask to crevice!

Hollow, full with unformed spirits.

Let me show you love uneaten,

Futures made in solid form.

 

_I have means to make you sweeter,

Sooth your swollen-bellied sharpness.

Women meant for glory’s uses

Medicines of love I’ll give you,

Sweetening your dire vaginas

Til your beauty is more tempting.

Then I will fulfill your sighings.

 

Much offended, back in girlform

Taunted with this new elixir

Wanting still to charm our morsel

We concede to eat his magic

Curious of love’s concoction

Knowing it could never harm us;

Dubious of unknown rapture.

 

He produced four crimson berries,

Threw them arcing to our yawning,

And we chewed and slowly tasted

Brightness bursting on our tonguetips

Which had only yet known gristle.

Something strangely changing inward.

 

 

 

6.  Love and Its Ending

Ecstasy in flooding madness

Melted us with sighs and moaning.

On the floor we fell in rapture,

Knowing that our hero touched us,

Feeling as he pulsed inside us

Unlike eating, this new gorging.

Hero-boy who slayed with unknown

Potion, oh! and made us sweeter,

Trembling newborn oceans, sweeter.

 

And he watched, not even blinking.

Touching nothing, cold with power.

Crouching in a corner, awestruck,

_They enjoy this very much!

 

As Vagina Girls lost sharpness,

Lost their consciousness in pleasure.

As their teeth dissolved in sweetness.

No more chewing, only swallow.

No more fierceness, only lapping

At the bones of prey once gnawed.

 

When Killer-of-Enemies came upon us

We were toothed and all-consuming

Til we woke, weaned from destruction

Free of bloodlust yet still bleeding,

Gored of unborn universe.

 

Vagina Girls.  Seas and eclipses.

Ravenously dull, we roam,

Beckoning til others feed us.

Enemy-Killer and his brothers,

Men who play at disappearance,

Never hiding long within us

Til their next attempt at death,

According to the myth we know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aria Riding lives in Seattle where she manages Psychomachia Theater, a venue that champions marginalized arts and voices.  She teaches and directs Butoh dance and performance in the U.S., Europe and Russia.  Aria Riding is online at lostdance.com.

 

 


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