Josie is just a translation of a translation of a—

 

Smile like     a torn envelope

                eyes flintlocked

to mine      I was hammer-

 

stricken then.      The nights we’d

sit on her roof beneath a sky      starless

as flat soda,        painting our nails

 

and smoking Cloves     waiting

for the sun to snap          daylight

   around her house       

 

 like hip-huggers.      And even now,

I keep her name         like a lighter

      In my pocket     because every thought

 

Is wooded with another     and I have stopped

digging a grave         for each bird I find

                emptied          like a small glove.      

 

Is it any wonder                        I’ve learned

          not to rename                        a body

devotion       just because it tithes

 

its minerals into dirt?       And yet,

The thin bright shell        of her laugh, is flung

and cracking      still,                              even still    

 

against my window.       But to remember

is never to mother back.               It is to launder,

to move through another like ants

 

 thieving through a pig,       clicking its jaw

open.         That is to say, I know this

isn’t about Josie anymore.

 

Right now, it’s about how I was once a girl—

 

a girl who sat on a roof      cool lip of color

gleaming on her toes         girl

still humming

                like chopped wood.         

 

 

 On Being Diagnosed With Body Dysmorphia

If i could               i would loosen every      key be     a toothless

                piano    be a tendency of      honey fungus

blessed gibberish     minxing through dirt         be anything

   but        another cul de sac another

         car crackling through it              another smile

deadbolted         as skin overexplains bones overexplains                             

                Here         my therapist prepares

encouraging words      like a mom packing cigarettes

   i take one because

                what else             what else can i take

what lover what drug goosefleshing      on my tongue

       will make me look away          because

god i can’t stop         looking       at this—

 

 

 

When I Announce That I’m Pregnant

 

i become a bonfire          how far along

Everyone needs to know             Eyes apple

by the dozen          12 weeks i crack

a branch with my teeth      An old man wears

a smile like a clearance tag      i’m told

to call him Papa          as a blister pack

of mothers take turns jumping forward to enact

each symptom of pregnancy        My former boss

the one with the spray of chin hair like     tobacco spit

the one who threatened to spank me 

for being late    says I hope you plan

on breastfeeding     erects

an evidence board      showing boys split clean

from the sun    American mouths gridled

on their faces                      Oooh say the mothers

before i can speak       grabbing their stomachs

and         swaying like loose teeth             

Breastfed        your boss slaps the board      turns

and shoots one of the mothers       Not breastfed

he explains as her blood agrees across the floor

Papa wears a smile          like broken glass    

Papa asks if they can feel      and despite it all you say

yes          it’s Papa after all

Everyone cheers everyone

steps over the dead woman to feel you

and now       everyone everyone 

is so warm