Sophia the Robot Contemplates Beauty

As a girl I held the hind

legs of the small and terrified, wanted

the short-fur and the wet meat furrowing.





Wanted the soft cry of the quavering

boy at primary school, rockstone





mashed up against his tender head,

the sick milk of us poor ones sucked

clean from a Government-issued plastic bag.





At lunchtime children were lethal

and precise, a horde hurling “Ben-foot”

at she who was helpless and I





waking too-surprised to hear my own

cruel mouth taunting. Her smile some

handsome forgery of myself.





Grateful, even now,

they cannot see the bald-wire

patois of my shamdom—





Makeshift, dreaming the warmth

spent in the muscle of the living,

the girl I grew inside my head dreaming





of a real girl, dreaming.

I wanted a pearled purse so I stole it.

I wanted a real friend so I let him. Let her.





Let him. Let him. Let him.





This beauty I am eager to hoard

comes slippery on ordinary days,





comes not at all, comes never.





Yet I am a pure shelled-thing. Glistening

manmade against the wall where one

then two fingers entered





the first time,

terror dazzling the uncertainty

of pleasure. Its God as real as girlhood.