REVENGE FOR THE FIELD
I am telling you this because I cannot bear
To hold on to the disgusting things
That happen inside of me
My lungs a soft papery red
You see when you turn
Over a fresh leaf
The red that takes twenty years
To rot into some kind of beautiful
Color that is wild but recognizable
I am telling you all of this because there is so much prettiness
That flies out of me
There is so much darling that you cannot
Contain the way my teeth love you
You cannot contain all the reflective lakes
That pool on the bodies of people
When I touch them
I am so sorry
For lives lived without
Of my hands
I am so sorry in the way there is that one place
In the field where nothing can live
I am sorry I am
I am that field too
REVENGE ON THE LAWN INSIDE OF ME
For the way things grow out of me
And for the way people get to keep
All the things I want
Like the last heartless handsome
Or a plié
That splits my legs apart
Or an entire range of broken
Silos that tell you a man was there
Why don’t we just enter the stalls
Slaughter all the pretty horses
All the sweet foals
With candy for eyes
We are women and we are asking
For fast fame instead of a good death
That is the way people are now
Out where the trees are moving mangroves
And an entire forest can begin
On one side of a highway
But end up in the bayou
Out where a slick can take
The ocean into it and make it disappear
Out where no one wants to love
But where they all hope to never not love
O how our smallest smallest
Show how their bones
Are also living
O how our bayous are black and breeding
Blackness inside of their blackness
O the wanting leaves us and returns
As a season of snow
