In a dream my nipples have been cut / open along the seams of my areola. A perfect dark circle, // the cavern of my breast. There, against the rims / clings a white paste, dried-up milk. // Elation. I have it in me after all.
Inside my hip a mother bird / is still constructing her nest— // beak against pelvic bone, scraping / as she arranges twig upon twig, little // splinters in the hollow where / once my own child ripened.
In a backyard suburb east of the Willamette river / my grandma sat my cousins & me around a well / waxed wooden table, had us pronounce each other’s / middle names until we could do so without stumbling.
I am rinsing mango juice off my / thighs when I notice its slim // body shimmying before me, / slicing through the crisp, // chlorinated water with ease.
An idea so fleeting it’s mere outline, dim constellation. / I think of abducting you— // a consideration as gentle and banal as what fruit to buy / for the week. It’s really only the word that compels, // abduct, abducere, to lead away as if by the hand, lovingly.
1. My body was colonized / in a language of silence. / Strands of my hair entrapped the ghosts
in the wind, / they were not held prisoner / but the abrasions kept them warm—or stuck.
You’re Chaos-born in a post-practice ice-bath; / you need heat. I fold paper into cranes and find you / hidden in each crease. I cut a hole in my skull.
The notes in the air are awakening, deep / in thought, and a little cold, probably / stretching just before the declaration / emerging from the bell of the clarinet that the boy
