Rebecca

Rebecca wets herself
with sand–
it trickles on her legs,
she is wet from within.
Sand bunched in her holes.
wrinkled and white
from the sea,
red from her rubbing.

She piles sand on towels,
lunches for her lovers,
pats the sun in her skin,
over her tummy to her button;
it rests with the sand,
warms her, --it tickles,
sticks inside, burns her flesh,
trapped to the white lining
of her red swim suit:

"I eat sand
I am seven
I curl my tongue
over each grain
like a powder,
an ice cream cone,
I swallow it whole.

Rebecca strides through the breakers,
sits, spreads in the calm, opens,
watching me, smug when I look—
Rebecca chases wild bears,
plucks hermit crabs from the sand.
I stare at her. My son plays near me.
He pulls a red boat as a truck on a string,
over a tar and sand stoned beach.

2.
Rebecca squats over the water;
her suit full, her mound swollen
and her breasts break with milk.
Rebecca is years older,
yet she is seven
caught in the sea's tongues,
with the clam's digits and feet.

3.
Rebecca sleeps naked with the sand,
with the cold and the rain—
no fur, no pillow, and no teddy bears.
She sleeps, her fingers moving,
teeth split slightly; her eyes shut,
“wishing at a father,” hissing at the moon.

She clings and sucks at the sun, comes,
her nails wound into one shin.

Rebecca is thirsty,
hungers for sandy water,
shrieking and rolling,
dead sand crumbles from her hand.

Rebecca is sixteen,
naked with seashells
blond hairs and freckles--
she pulls at the sand,
tossing it from her lips,
freezing the seeds within.

Rebecca is seven
the tide is warmer,
she dances with the moon
Rebecca runs from the sun,
as a brown leaf from a fire,
from the autumns of summers

—Will I return, she asks,
spins and laughs away.

I sit with this child,
near the water,
I am long gone,
my child returned to the sea,
to our mother;

I walk to her later
to her fallen sand boat, –
sails hidden under mud;
her hands lost in my eyes—

Rebecca is seven
picking at the white lining
of her red swim suit
rubbing and rubbing
she itches, races in circles,
tagging other children,
lost from their fathers.

4
Rebecca is married
sucking at candy,
asleep on a towel
in a white ancient cottage
on a black sandy floor:
sand bunched in her fists,
she caresses her breasts,
sprinkles sand on them.
rubs them, shines them with spit

Rebecca dances, sweating
breasts redder,
thrashing her nipples,
she pulls them closer,
suckles them, dries her lips
with the sand, she
sucks and sucks,
eats many faces, crystals,
then she cradles and shakes
with her invisible lover

Rebecca sleeps on the sand
her breasts dig within, –

As she pulls, her teeth grind
she thrusts; -- her hands flood
with white-winged dandelion seeds

Rebecca is thirty-seven,
and it's time to chase the serpent
she searches southward,
her hairs, aged and white with purple

Rebecca sways with her arms
to her chest, with the swings
of a child's house, birds rowing with willow trees.

5.
In the sun fall, Rebecca's fingers write
circles with warm sand fathers,
in the morning she fucks with that sea,
weeds, thickets, rubbing her ass

Her man,
the old sea man
fucks up and up
sand plowed by her ass;
until she turns
and is fucked from the rear;
he comes, an indifferent lover,
striking her fist to the sand
she beats her ungrateful fingers,
squeezing her cheeks,
her palms turn up,
she shakes her hair madder
the swells beat at her,
her red swim suit wet
with the tar stained scum of her lover

He finishes,
leaves,
and the sand flats bake,
and the red heat dries
the naked skull whiter.

6.
Rebecca is forty;
she paints her sand cottage
brushes her hair from her eyes,
She builds a mountain,
sucks the sand in her throat,
while a sailor holds
a thin, spidery ladder

Rebecca burns in the sun.
She is sixty and blind,
the wind's in her blouse;
her breasts, thin, flap
on her stomach;
unseen her children play
with her feet,
tossing the sand with her toes,
she fondles her lovers,
coughs and sings
and is wanting—

Rebecca is seven,
fires enclose her;
her smile is wanton;
she twitches, squatting,
beating her chest,
closed eyes squinting,
she rubs the sand harder,
her fingers pick at it,
flick at the faces—
she hugs her wrist
with her thigh
she is lost in a dream:

Rub a dub, dub, three men in a tub,
Rub a dub, dub, three men in a tub

Rebecca sleeps in the streets of this city
She is seventy and dying—
She crawls with the shark,
hides from the nets, dead masts

Rebecca is dead at eighty-two,
She floats with the tide, is lost at sea.

Sean Farragher