life begins at 40, they say
but Mama Gina says
fuck, I am too fucking old.
each year passed, on her skin
like weeds bloom these lines
too intricate to reveal some
fucking fortune. like her
her patrons aged but not
their appetites, and so Mama Gina
barely spend the nights with cash
in her hand or cock in her mouth. her joints
have started aching and shame
began crawling down her face
long immune to tears,
and so, tonight, and not in any other fucking night,
Mama Gina decides to retire.
with a dark homely man she enters
a room like all other rooms in the building
like all other buildings
on this filthy boulevard.
she lets the man consume every inch of her
except her mouth: for women like her
the mouth is for true love: some fucking
love which had not come for her
after all these fornicating years.
she moans and she screams:
Mama Gina mastered all these feigned feelings
of love with a stranger, of hope and happiness.
o how she perspires, but bleed she doesn’t,
for blood and herself had long
been estranged. the man hands her few bills:
no tip, no card, no hope, no happiness.
moments like this she feels
most lonely, but she’s too tired, too old now
to lament or understand.
then, as in those many years,
she goes to pee profusely:
it is, for all those years,
the weeping of her body.
a front cover of a Madame Bovary Penguin edition
