Morning

The sky was white
and gray and stayed that way,
with dark leaves
of damp trees above
and the sound of one bird
chirping from
the feeder--
sounding like a recitation
of a to-do list.

Her Body: Brutal

She came home brutalized.
Her eyes were like dusty hollows
where pupils flitted like ghosts,
and her voice was a whisper, and she was ours,
even though her skin
was raised and angry
like she had slept with fleas
and her lank hair
begged for a wash.
And all we asked was that she kick--
not the rehab this time,
but we would watch her, and this time it would stick.

And that was the first month,
and we knew she was sick.
Doing it cold was like rebirthing daily;
I shuddered at her, and poured
the cough syrup down the drain, and
pitched the alcohol from
the medicine chest.
A toddler again, she wasn't trusted
with any poison under the sink,
but food she threw up like
a champ, and hygiene was like ambition,
and the second month she was talking
sometimes.
And I realized what she never asked for.
So I had to ask her when.

At 95 lbs if that why should she?
And when she was that far gone,
how could she?
And she didn't really know when she stopped.
Only it was a relief,
because it was another fucking thing
to cramp about. And then we got her tested.
(And for AIDS, and for Hep C.)

And blessedly it was only the best
and worst of the three
I thought about. Probably
first trimester, then,
although I couldn't imagine how this came about
except I could,
and how, and when,
and that she spent it on a fix,
and probably
wouldn't have thought of it again.

And it was it seemed suddenly
too likely, given all the math,
21 weeks or so when it happened.
Or had to have.
And what would we even call it?
Rape? How could that be proved?
And I would not have dared to ask her
and she lived under my roof.

And she didn't want it.
She wanted to kick.
And she didn't want it.
She wanted to go back to school.
And she didn't want it.
Because it couldn't work in her too-sick
too-small body, how frail,
and could not fit into her too-new
reborn life.

But none of that mattered.
Her body, like a wrapping
for an unwanted gift,
shredded so that she
could see the
generation she
left to be raised by me.

Her Body: Graveyard

The first time at twenty-five
I felt the child inside me alive
until the cramp and blood--
the violent ending,
of my unsung son.

And the second time,
she barely registered--
a missed period, a test,
and I guessed,
maybe yes--this time
I'd fight my biology.
But I fought nausea
and in tears knew
how quickly
she
ceased to be.

My hard-fought fertility
has taken me from
the bed to the ER
to doctors and the spare
couch where I have sat,
paging through unaffordable options,
to have
just one, adorable child.

So tell me,
when this one dies,
if it dies, under my heart,
when do I start to heal--

with a surgical finish
and a promise that we will meet again?
Or will some
jumped up motherfucker
make me leave his little
bones
joined in me until the
rush of
thankless labor
some days off
let me unburden the ghost
of another child I did not have?

Make my heart a
stone,
and inscribe there
their names unwritten
for what your laws will make
of my potters' womb.

A monument to death in me.
My life a tomb
for your
purity.


After this.

Her Body: Home

She saw the pills in the drain of the sink,
covered in coffee grounds.
He could have rinsed them down--
but he wanted her to see.
She thought about rinsing them off
and hiding them somewhere like her purse,
but she didn't. Playing that game
would only make it worse.
She told herself she could get more
if she said she was just seeing her ma;
he would let her go then, she could
make it quick--it wasn't so far.

And then a week went by and she didn't go.
And then there were two.
By the third week she thought
about it a lot; by the sixth week, she knew.
She couldn't say a word to him--
he'd only rub it in her face
and she didn't know what story
might get her to that other place,
the one halfway across the state
with the 72-hour wait.

Her Body, Battlefield

The battle was here
on her skin,
under her nails,
thick in her nostrils,
warm at her legs,
annihilating
for moments,
desperate for weeks.

When the
insurgency
became her emergency
the truce flag
was waved
not by herself
but by the heroes
she thought might
have saved
her

but she
was given up for dead
on the battlefield
of her body
(or at least, hors
de combat),

and her occupier was
treated with
as if
she mattered no more.
For on one battle
rested her entire
war.

Ley Lines

Who am I
when these changes come
and yet they only gracefully intersect
my centered lines?

My lines are not broken
with my past,
my heritage,
my family,
my self-knowledge--

I grow bigger with
more knowledge,
stronger with more choices,
happier with more freedom,
satisfied with more truth--

and your truth doesn't cancel
out mine,
nor your activism
shade me.

My magnetic pull
is true north-bound
to the pole star
I'll fix my instruments by,
but I

know my journey will be varied

and many stars are out there,
and this ocean is wide enough
for your journey and mine.

So I will honor both the places we intersect--

and know the places where we don't.

Her Body Migrant

They wanted her
here--
there,
back down,
thirteen,
no hope,
prisoner
used, traded.
Tool.

Dreams:
nightmares only.
Freedom denied
and penetration
guaranteed.
Stolen life
a story
of transit-points
and bargains
and sometimes,

she was the chip.

This seed
that tastes like shame

holds a body in bounds,

and would you dare bargain for her
freedom with indifference to her
life--and

not call this thing "rape"?

Make her body the place
you sink in your
staff and wave your
merry flag? A fish and a cross?

Fuck yourself.

Her body is her proof.
Let her have her freedom.

And leave your beady little conscience
to its worrying stones.
She bore her cross
why should she bear
a crown of thorns?

Her body is not your business to shame
but the burden you
need
to know.

And if you do not dare--
speak no more of her fate
anywhere,
slink down from your place;
for you have no right to
judge
what you would
not face.
Her body,
and the sanctity of its life.