(v)

she prays to food

food
be gentle

birth
still leaves
me out

(vi)

she recognized

the poster
from the boy
she’d been seen
by dogs
with, her mother

was gone
her father

grey as water’s
last
meal

dyed
the wigs

(vii)

one woman’s sorrow
is another’s
intermission

bread don’t break
not in blood’s
backyard

acne

illiteracy

(viii)**

she is holding the bird up to the phone
she is crushing
the bird
can your voice
and mine
caught swimming
swim…

I think of my mother in her block of ice summoning a curling iron and of my father sending a robot to prison. of a leafblower named mercy hugged by my brother for outing my sister’s electric chair. of nakedness, poor nakedness, always playing itself in the story of had I not been invented I would’ve had to exist. the black eye how it quoted swan.