after Robin Coste Lewis

I was hired to cry lacuna! lacuna!
‍& press the flesh of my pubic bone—
bust of a woman rising from shipwreck,
grinning at all that flotsam. Little five feet
of Venus hips, shedding my gold hair
all over the mattress—deathless
goddess of the spangled mind, I dream of being
planted in water, my cut part growing a verdant limb.
I want someone to address, but o darling
is a Bloody Mary chant to apparate
my own panting self. What have I got to do
to prove my body steeps in a cast-iron kettle,
that my herbal scent blooms with sugar?
Fine, I am another woman painting herself
in thin glazes over wet white ground.
On my first bleed, a girl spat in my face
that I was nothing but a walking uterus.
Sun-skirted sister, where are you now?
All night your laughter threads Cassopeia’s
spread arms. May the winds carry you
out of your own self-hatred.