MOTHERLAND
after Sally Mann
The body is not a body, though you could braid
the choking vines cascading down the back, upturn
the skirt-bark hugging the hull of her, as many
are wont to want to. History recommends a woman
know how to be a tree: blood pumped to phloem,
hands broken into brittle branches, orifices
callused closed with wound-wood. I learn the word
for the way wood will try to heal the cut: cicatrix,
marked where some part detached, navel-knotted
burl left on limb, furrowing felled parts, where fruit
or fetus once unfurled. If my mother were a tree,
then she might be the last one standing: field’s-edge,
somewhere South. Sepia sky only starting to shadow.
PEACOCK FLOWER
Native to Mexico and the Caribbean
Caesalpinia pulcherrima
Begin with the language of the instrument:
Resist. Resist the cartographies they pin
you to. Resist the names they speak
into your mouth. Refuse the proboscis,
pollination, penetration. The pioneer
with his penis and his promises
of ordered liberty. Resist temptation,
or don’t, but know you have your options.
Refuse the life forced into you:
be tannic, hell-bent. Fury of red,
a noxious, toxic seed. Cover up
with slicing spines. Dream yourself
from the disaster. Take up space;
put yourself right. No. Put yourself first.
__________________________________
The italicized text in this poem is lifted from the syllabi of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade
LA LLORONA
the crying woman
I was the scorned wife—
all spring, sounds of sirens
my only company.
The morning, unfaithful.
Trail behind the house,
smothered in seepage,
the respite I needed,
so I trudged it every day.
Snowdrops sopped,
the creek swelled
around my sadness.
I was inconsolable,
childless, a woman
they’d want to ward away:
unwashed hair, stained
shirt, same as yesterday.
