wyrdwind

Well Wishes

You smack my mouth

for speaking truth, I snap

back twice as hard. Evil

is such a careless word.

My very first word

on this dying earth

was bite.

A girl with an appetite,

that’s me raiding cupboards

in the middle of the night.

My hunger offends in the daytime,

I’ll just take what’s mine, too expensive,

expansive, I go on the offensive.

I’m a good girl, not a nice girl.

Didn’t feel the difference at your hands.

I knew it when I counted what I loved

into the darkness at every scathing reprimand.

A crumpled pillow list, wonder who heard it,

on the floor somewhere. Under the bed. Down

an empty street in the wind. My birth

a bitter dream come true, wonder

who wished for me too.

Wanted Woman

With child Isis hid

among crocodiles in a river cave.

Notorious single mothers, jaws

can crush car bumpers or

ferry hatchlings in their wicked

grins. Thick skin. Armor even.

Come mating season longest lived

has her pick. Survival depends

on this experience, haven’t

seen fit to change it in, oh,

85 million years. Ancient,

was it comfort, a natal dark,

like the Nut sky who raised her,

stretched over, making love to the earth,

too hot to touch each other, stolen

pleasure between punishing heat spells,

they’re about language. Not for no reason,

she the master magician, skill enough

to wield the Sun god’s own name.

She made her way. The way I wove

quail bush tunnels by the river as I couldn’t go

home.

Water Walking

If you’ve never had to carry

five gallon buckets full

or bathe with a hose outside,

you’re in luck. It sucks, obviously.

Not the outside. That’s alright.

Coulda been worse, don’t get me

wrong. I don’t shrink from the fight.

Sometimes, you know, it would just be

nice

not to wake up and cry like clockwork,

a pacemaker, I’m grateful for those times.

Concurrent streams. Then and now make we,

tense a meaningless technicality, she

is the girl I used to be. Always present

in times of great need. The seed,

for raindrops and teardrops as precious

as grain. In the desert if you hope

to feed.