song#1
From Songs of Amy
my mother was twelve
when the neighbor boy
was hired to watch
the neighbor was older
he was sixteen
or fourteen a really big kid
not mean
not nice either
there were teddy bears
all over her bed
before her dad left
he brought them home
the neighbor boy was
mean not nice
he took her
never been kissed
never been touched
naked on display sunken
fingertips into collarbone
the neighbor left
her body behind
on a pile of teddy bears
mean not nice
her mom threw away
the bears too old now
she refused to listen
to believe her daughter
my mother was forced
to wash the sheets
by hand
forced to launder the stains
to hang dry
white sheets
surrender
Tammy Jolene Atha holds an MFA in creative writing from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Currently, Tammy lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with her partner and is a faculty member at Southeast Community college where she teaches in the English Department. Her work has one an Academy of American Poets prize and has been published in Fiction Southeast. If you saw Tammy on the street you would describe her as "someone who was definitely goth in high school."
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