epigenetics or: warning song

skin wicked, shade
just around the bend
i circle the light and then
abandon

what a treat to have control
to step out of what’s panicking
the floodwater into the air

people love a story of panic
rubbernecks at the crash site
newspapers full of terror
and no remedy

meanwhile, a moth dries out
after a long night, meanwhile
evaporate i tell myself
to begin again from dew

cicada on mulberry, i take the dark
-ening fruit out from the center
of what i am trying to say

into each palm, i coax a wren
their total weight: four quarters in all

this is how to pay for the retraction
of terror, for the temporary suspension
of the story of the story of it all

when growing too close
to a foundation, a mulberry is invasive

the fruit ripens both the color
of our blood and how we see the color
of our blood when it is still inside

how to control what has been split
-ting open for centuries?

hacking the background
is the cicada’s warning song

epigenetics or: the names we were given

when anna stands between her father at her feet like barley
in spring and her mother, a seed, being carried away to a field
of disappearing, beneath her is land already fertilized by power

when the sky is green, stay inside, and remember how anna sailed
unnoticed in the ocean, the ship streaking the water red like ribbon
sewn at the factory on the shore— promise, a tender hem like a scar

after losing her hand, anna will marry into a name meaning fir tree
—evergreen, coniferous, pain always comes back like dust in a shadow
when the sun returns, remember there is a fire somewhere we cannot see

anna’s youngest marries into a name with two meanings
one: chimney builder— air from the flute passes down to the flames
the threat is in the house of our bodies and my mother is born

the other meaning of the name is onion— object like a fist
that once you cut open, well you know the rest, and when the truth
leaks out, she tries to contain it, my mother, who gave me the namesake

enough