Lament
when the mother was eggs, blood, and salt when the mother was bud, blossom, and fruit when the mother was migraines, cysts, and sacs when the mother’s lit firecracker in her arteries when the mother was stone was bone cancer flowering lung, liver, from flowering womb when the breast branched into berry brambles did she feel her heart chambers darkened when the mother was a uterine entombment when the mother was not goddess not golden when the mother was not silken but sutured serpentine stitches edging her sisters’ quilting when her landscape withered, hot, and parched when birds dispersed her burs (her diaspores) when the mother lamented rivers, so dammed her whole earth’s inertia shifted, axis tilted up and all the water spilled, spilled and filled her did she know her spirit was shedding her flesh transfiguring into cool pinpricks of midnight did the mother know she was already in ascent