NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED by Nicole Barth [10/7/10]

Is there a prescription for

a repeated slap in the face?

Or would it be labeled

in God's little black book

as a glitch—

a character flaw...

A fuck-up, an oops—

when a young woman

bawls into her calloused hands

as she holds a cancer stick between

her Français plastic nails

in the menacing mouth of the night?

The black bandana's talons

grip her rounded cranium

as her body folds within itself—

her own concavity

the only haven she has

from the bullets of

ridicule,

self-loathing

and despair

that are fired her way.

What are you supposed to say

to a woman who suffocates her sorrow

with carcinogenic fumes?

Have you enough depravity to

spit at the crumbling stoop

of the brownstone

she wallows on?

Or does the knife in the gut—

[surely meant for her]

redirect its course

and twist

in your side?

Can you find the heart

to sit next to the disintegrating

countenance of a broken woman,

whose own blood has cackled in her face,

licked its greedy lips in delight

as it relished in her plight?

Will you embrace a shuddering

stranger

until she soaks your shirt?

The rivulets of shattered hopes

running down your shoulder—

you are now the earth that absorbs

and receives both malice and need

blindly.

Can you complete the orbit—

these neverending sequences

of coincidences

and gut wrenching compassion—only

to realize that you

stand on the other side of the scale?

You are implanted

into the body of a parallel universe.

For you bear the same stain

that released the floodgates

to the sobbing woman's demons.