Blood Ode

fat girl nicks herself shaving in the shower,
resents the water that will carry her
blood to sea. Blood, worthless currency,
cannot buy a country but becomes it,
platelets stitching into streets. fat girl weeps
for the blood that won’t return—
how many mothers have tried
such a homecoming, sons and daughters
inking the tarry streets? fat girl becomes
a mother through her looking, has seen
too many children mangled by a sense
of justice. She carries somebody’s child
in the crater their deaths create
inside her—if she could just reach deep
enough, if she could piecemeal her own
plump, how many layers would it take
to make a bulletproof lung? fat girl mourns
the blood muling a persistent path
through the drainpipes. If blood must be
taken, let there be coral glittering
like gemstones at their feet, dolphins pitching
foam in arcs out from the sea. Let there be air
enough. fat girl could be a mother, fretting
the impossible journey of her blood.

Breath Ode

I have loved my breath’s every elaborate shape. Sometimes, I watch it waft
its yacht on an October morning’s waves. Sometimes, when winter returns,
my breath rips a rocket—no atmosphere—moon beams at my heels.

Or my breath is a magician posed with fire on her lips. She swallows
and smoke chimneys her neck till she’s volcanic.
This breath tapers like a vial. That one, blooms a jellyfish

or the open mouth of a light bulb kindled to life. I pray my breath exists
in someone else someday—someone who jogs, perhaps. Or at least
someone who doesn’t know what it means to cry on her 25th birthday

amazed to still have breath left to lose. I mean, breathing is a lesson
never learned, though Momma taught me to breathe slow
in the blue bar of a cop’s light—they don’t understand fear

isn’t the same as guilt—but my breath is not a metaphor
so I can’t shape it to a mask, to camouflage, to a bullet-proof vest.
Only my breath decides: its thrusts a dagger in my throat—

maybe my breath understands enough of living to let me end
my own damn self, but the lights hissing in my rearview leave no time
to marvel at what I guess could be my breath’s last trick.

Lot’s Wife

The truth is I’d do it again, turn into the winking eye
of a city flushed with fire. I hope I burn
this time, my body curling like a ruffled apron
on the hook, the pen-scratched books, the candles
cindered to scents. At least let me be
turmeric—cardamom—saffron sprinkling from heaven
like the dandruff of Mars. I want to be a spice
men burn for. I want to be architecture, the pillar
of a temple where men line to floss their tongues
on the salt snowing my truss. Salt cathedral. Salt
palace. Mountain tops crusted with salt. Country
whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast
of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women
like me whose tombs are the only homes we can keep—
GOD give me a name worth remembering.

FAT FUCK

I could reach into your fridge, tongue
the Hӓagen Dazs, stuff its lengthy
pint into my ever-eager mouth—
that’s the kind of sick bitch I am.

Tell me it’s unhealthy
to view each meal as a battlefield.
Tell me to fight the fork,
or not(it’s too late now

the sweat dimpling my cheek
is grease).Hold me,let me coat
your coat with whatever
decadence I dress in:

pretty swine with McIntosh
turning on the spit.The fragrant split
fruit browning my porky lips.
Feed me,

not to satisfy (impossible),
but to remind me what I cannot be
without—

what is a pig
if not unclean?If not the ungodly

gristle buttering your teeth?

I cannot be the only one
your teeth has torn into.

You are not the only teeth to cut
me down. My own mouth
gnashing—finally,
the pain outside myself.

Tell me again I’m the one who eats
everything, then feed me everything
I’ve been given: fat fuck. moose knuckle.
flabby ass. cankles.

Tell me my belt wraps the world’s waist

then beat me with it.