‘shattered vagina’

Come to california 

True jesus land 

The streets ways and boulevards 

Are engraved in mirror 

So that everyone can see up our skirts 

So that everyone can see up our shattered vaginas 

Between our pink and holy shopping bags 

In between our missions and deserts 

Where the crusade met the crucifixion 

Where hollywood is the graveyard of Mary 

And the sacramento river the miracle wine 

Or the mother’s tears or the flat diet coke 

Because modernity requires sand for glass 

To prevent the second coming or the sphinx’ cumming 

Because jesus got a gold star 

From Glower to La Brea 

From Sunset to Yucca 

And the preview at the sun red cinema spells out: 

Legacy is Paramount


Rachel Nichols is from Sacramento, California—main inspirations being Rilke, Eliot, Plath, Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg. Interested in the body and/as the desert and religion, specifically Catholicism.