Is that a porcupine or a virus?
Hanging around didn’t seem safe
so I dropped last night. I take it
you did the same. Used to be
nobody would bug us on the branch,
but now squirrels, squirrels everyday
everywhere. Even on our own twig
we weren’t safe. But what do we
do now? How can we roll fast
enough to escape squirrels down here?
I can’t seem to roll at all. What if we
sprout wings, become orioles and fly
with coconuts—or are they owls?—
show the squirrels we’re top fruit?

after Margaret Atwood

in the end
               we all become
                           houses–

a kitchen
          with a too-short
                      countertop,
                                 a blanket like dimpled thighs,
                                                  a shoe rack
                                                               in the corner
                                                                           for those ankles
                                                                                     that leave and return.

                                                  it seems that my body has transmogrified into
                                                  a quarter of space in a four-plex,
                                                  compartmentalized and cozy–
                                                  crooked wooden floors and
                                                  cupboards that have been sealed shut
                                                  for– oh,
                                                                   who
                                                                              knows
                                                                                           what reason?

                                                                                                         a window ledge
                                                                                            embraces the curry
                                                                               and rosemary plants outside.
                                                                   they wait for my fingertips to
                                                     to climb and clutch
                                       and speculate about
                       the next forage into fertile soil–
               a birdflight
in reverse.

At twenty-five, adrift in the mirror,
I cried, It will never get better than this!
Sobbed as if a time-lapse film
unblossomed in the rented sheen

of the medicine cabinet. The girlishness
I was told to tend ready to crisp and drop.
That’s what pretty does. It dies.

So I shrugged off pretty, despite
my mother’s warnings, and chose
a cheap wedding dress that quit
at the knee and loosely shrouded

the most suitable I’d ever be. Refused
to process in regalia for my PhD.
Smart shatters the vase.

Smart skips the strappy heels.
Smart enough to learn I would never
matter to my father except
as I reflected him, I gathered

bouquets of promotions and pages,
each stained by pistils under pressure
for years. Now I’m a litter of leaves

molding in a specimen jar.
Through the bottle protecting me,
I see how often it’s the pretty one
gilded by honors. The irony.

It’s not that I picked the wrong
way to please, but my eyes
smart at the fumes sometimes.

I’m asking her to live
without me, & she knows it.

- from Time, by Zeina Hashem Beck

I thought I might not bleed
this month.

I cried in the shower, thinking of the babies
I didn’t want to birth.
                                      (But.)

My breasts felt like I could succeed
at nursing, they were so swollen,
pained by the falling water.

But they were empty.
And then I bled.

And you, ankles showing,
on the precipice
                          of walking away.

I nursed you in a hospital room
high over a circle of city streets.

And then you learned to feed yourself.
Now we don’t even notice
when you lift your fork to your mouth.

I watercolor us, mother, child,
centered. So is the open window,
that distant horizon.

Quick!
                How do I face my passing
as you emerge
like your first words, then sentences?

Your whole language
                always our vanishing point.

The vein is moving up,
Oh baby, this neighborhood is planters and weeds
A rupture in my feed
I’m carrying the books, I’m writing the articles

Give me a jingle when it pops
I suppose I’m of age to make arrangements
To sit solemnly and take hands
Planters, weeds, guns, invisible money: America

The bass guitarist
La la la la la la, stoic, chanting,
Strutting while standing still
Are they dead yet? Has the transfer begun?

Let’s get territorial | mark our lines in sand | build walls along a predetermined perimeter | erect watch towers and occupy our time | use language like bricks | mask our faces in paint and non-expressions | construct dams in waterways | let’s just call all this shit ours | let’s just keep us in and keep them out | —create an enemy out of nothing; create fear from nothing | let’s get on terra firma | demarcate the land that we live in | call my people ‘my people’ | let’s protect what we have and detract from what we don’t want | let’s yell our assertions and demands and whisper what is holy | let’s learn the difference of loam and peat and dirt and soil and sand and land and earth | let’s lie on the grass that grows in the mud that keeps down the rocks and water and something deeper | this is territory.