“I hated myself for opening the door and learning to hunger for the places I used to run from.”
Read More“As a girl, you tore bark from trees like a bear
already too late to know who hurt you…”
“I had trouble breathing and thought of the water…and the sea…and all of the grief i have stored there…”
Read More“There’s a boy waving a picture
of an umbilical cord wound
like a noose. He must be fourteen.
He looks at me through my car window
and bellows something about motherhood…”
“The scars started as blisters, then sores that cratered deep
into her calves and shinbone, both legs trying to shed the fever,
and the medicine needed to save a life,
and once the fever left, the holes that could not be stitched…”
“Holy the stirrups
holy the raised knees
holy the cervix
holy the spread
holy that hole
according to need…”
“(tell me how they made her)
shark-mouthed, gap-toothed
free-wheeling, obstinate
little girl of too many
rolls and teeth…”
“For breakfast, Granny eats a pack
of cigs between sips of coffee.
By suppertime, she’s coughed them back up,
transformed them into the garden tools
she uses to dig a circle of holes around us…”
“After he broke my little finger, snapping the bone
to make me leg go of my phone, it swelled by half
& the ligament pulled tight, leaving the finger curved
inward like a claw…”
“Preface: Earth has become a wasteland. Humanity is fleeing, on lavish cruise ships, to struggling settlements on Mars. The Aniara is one such cruise ship. It carries 8,000 passengers…”
Read More“she’s built
she’s stacked
she’s a brick
house…”