America, a laboring woman. She’s been at it for 240 years, trying to push out new life. Her promise. An inevitable truth. Her bistre belly round, tight with child she’s been here before many times her amniotic Eden. The nurse feeds her chipped ice. America stands, Marches through the sanitized arteries of the hospital. Beneath incandescent cold. With each Revolution her cervix dilates. But this baby’s breech. No crown, yet holy. Breaking water, America seethes. Shamed by her rapacious offspring, and the bleaching of their stirp sins. Her bistre belly round, Tight with child. Feverish now. Her children fight in the streets. Cain done killed Abel and left his body laying on the frozen ground up at Wounded Knee. Now Abel’s blood hallows the riverbed at Standing Rock. Can you hear America screaming? Our mother. A thousand tied tongues attempting to extirpate the bullets and bleed the old abscesses caused by the Cross. Will you sage the wounds on her body and weave a cradle of sweet grass and willow to hold her promise? because we are still here wiping the sweat from her brow, whispering in her ear, to just keep breathing.

it is time, baby girl. from this point on every choice that you make will be an answer Who do you want to be? What kind of woman? be a tire swing a child’s first jump rope. be a glow worm or a Canada goose. be the mason’s thumbprint that is left in the mortar between the stones. be a walk in the woods be a paper birch in a forest of pines be the first step that is taken off trail be no internet connection no signal a dropped call. be a walking stick for others be the lover’s tree or better still, be the stone that is picked from the earth, the one used to chisel the heart around their names that is still carried in a pocket today. be the breath that is taken the courage to try be the first kiss be the Aspen’s dance, baby the cello wind be juniper berry bold be the first leaf to change its color in the fall but the last to drop from the tree be the No. 2 pencil no, be the poets hand you’re the author revise revise and revise some more. and my darling sweet girl, whatever you do just be.

I remember your first guitar, the first song you learned to play, Smoke, Smoke on the Water. I remember Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven came next. Rose, do you wanna smoke? I’ve got some weed, you’d whisper through my bedroom door, knowing I’d put down my book to get high in your abscess. With bastard hands and spidered fingers, you’d play Stairway for me. I don’t remember when the song ended or when you stopped strumming your homeless strings. Now, I watch you suffocating beneath oil and perlite, your teeth have become ash. You don’t smoke weed anymore; haven’t for a long time. You knock on my bedroom door,Rose, I need a ride to South Minneapolis, take me to Mid-Town Global Market. I don’t want to go. I pretend you’re not sick. At least you’re not drinking anymore, but I don’t want to go. I can’t stand the sound of you puking in the bathroom, to watch you curl into the couch. On the way, I cry to you I beg you to stop. Don’t look at me like that, you say, Don’t fucking judge me. I’m not, I lie, you don’t have to do this. Look at it this way, I’m giving you something to write about. I don’t want to write you like this, I don’t want to write a poem about addiction. I don’t want to frame you, little brother, inside that word. You are so much more. I’ve avoided my pen, let it accumulate dust, because I knew it would bleed your name and I’d have to carve you into my femur to keep you close to me. When we get to the Market you tell me to walk around, check it out, grab a bite to eat, you’ll be back in 30 minutes. Then you leave me. I pretend you’re not sick. I look at jewelry, I like the hand-made pieces, the art, the clothes. I cover my face with silk, and pretend you’re not sick. On the way home you’re more yourself, or at least you want to talk now. You talk about building fences, buying a truck, getting back on your feet. You talk about buying a guitar and wanting to play again. I look down at your hands, your bastard hands, the ones that just betrayed your body, held the needle, told the lie. It was never warm inside her womb. I wonder if you can ever trust them again to make something beautiful.

It has always been you and me No beginning No end We are infinite Bring unto me, feverish rains Bleach my bones with Willow’s breath. Please. Hold this Bleeding Heart That beats open for you Broken The way water breaks the earth. I am crevice I am canyon I am the Grandmothers. Please. Whisper me awake Red bird melodies for mourning. My blood’s bouquet A cellular chorus I will sing for you I am song. Please. Kiss me alive Fleshing Sage Girdle this want On Alyssum’s bed I am Red Earth. Ripened for seed. Amend my inner thigh Cultivate my hips I am the wolf’s serenade Siphoned through ribbed teeth. The Equinox is your asking, “Should I come?” The answer is yes You May. You May.

Do you remember when purple was your favorite color? When you were a little girl, it was the first crayon in the box that had to have the paper peeled back. You would color everything, even faces in shades of violet. Razzle Dazzel Rose, Hot Magenta, and Purple Pizzazz. You memorized the names of all the purple blossoms in your mother’s garden. Bellflower, Iris, Verbena, and you had a slight obsession with Echinacea. When you were sixteen, you’d jam Prince in the living room, pretending you were dancing in his Purple Rain. Now, no more Pansies catch your eye. The music has stopped. No one is dancing. Purple reminds you of the Crown Royal bag, a box of broken promises, Stupid bitch, and that bruise on your left cheek.

(Mount Carmel, Kentucky 1988 Age 10) Do you remember that summer? Summer of ‘88 The trees bore no new saplin’s Maw’s switches broke, So we hid all the knives in the house. God peeled the roof back and we slept under the sun. Johnny left that Spring, and took his pedophile hands with him. His fingerprints began to fade from our young bodies. Bleached by the Willow Tree, we’d been baptized, --Born Again-- of pond water and mud pies, the summer of ’88. Cinder block back steps, boom box blastin’, Tiffany singin’, I think we’re alone now, Doesn’t seem to be anyone around— It was true the summer of ’88. Daddy came to visit. We shot hoops out by the barn till the sun went down, then ran through the hay field fillin’ our mason jars with lightenin’. At bed time he said he was gonna buy us a Mockin’bird. Tuckin’ us in and kissin’ our cheeks, Sandra Dee smiled, The summer of ’88. Do you remember how the honeysuckle swallowed up every fence on the farm? Those tiny sunset trumpets, hornin’ out their song got all the hummingbirds a dancin’. Did I ever tell you I held one that summer? A hummingbird. An accident, really, it flew right into my hands. I felt its wings kissin’ my Life and Love lines. I’m sorry I didn’t show you-- I wanted to, but in that moment I felt a whisper through my bones-- hummingbirds weren’t meant for catchin’, and they weren’t meant for keepin’ either, so, I let it go. That summer, because I was ten, I got to ride the Setter like the rest of the Big Kids. You’d walk behind me stompin’ out clumps of Red dirt, buryin’ any exposed roots. Funny, isn’t it, how that hasn’t changed?

(I had this boyfriend once, we were about a year and half in—when he asked me, “Why don’t you ever say that you love me?” This was my response:) I’m not going to say, I love you. Those words have no place in my vocabulary. My Momma said, I love you, just before she tried to sell me to a man in a bar-- I was five years old. He was waiting there for me— reeking of Tanqueray and lime. With sorrel-stained fingertips from filterless Pall Malls he touched my face— I forgot to breathe. I was the object of his twisted desires, ‘cos he loved me too, you know? And my Grandad sure did love me when I was a little girl. He loved those dresses my Grandma used to make me wear on Sunday— maybe it was the tights and the ruffles. Maybe it was the preacher that got him so excited, ‘cos he’d snatch me up and center me firmly on his lap, pressing his boner against my bottom. Shhh, he’d whisper, You cant tell anyone. You don’t Want anything to happen to me, do you? Don’t you love me? Love? And I’m not going to say, I love you, ‘cos that’s what my Grandma said, after she whooped me with that switch while I was naked in the tub— causing my legs, arms, and back to bleed with each swat. I only did this ‘cos I love you! She’d say, leaving me to shiver in the pink bubbles. Now clean up this mess! I’m not going to say, I love you, because that’s what he said for twelve years, seven months, and three days— every morning after while my body blossomed in violence fields of magenta and violet, Why’d you make me do that Babe, you know I love you. So, no— No. I absolutely cannot say, I love you ‘cos that’s what my Daddy said with a fedora smile right before he drove away and I disappeared in his rear-view mirror— I love you, Princess. (I was in a different place when I wrote this poem. It’s an examination of what it means for me to say those words, I love you. And this poem navigates the trauma I used to associate with and attach to those words. I didn’t know how to give or receive love, or how to trust or believe it. I was never taught. But it’s never too late to learn. I learned how to forgive those who hurt me, while using I love you as their shield. I’ve been taught love and forgiveness by my children, my community, and through the act of doing this—poetry. I love and forgive myself. I can now say I love you and mean it.) I love you.

I can see the constellations In her eyes As she watches the snow fall A tapestry of song and honey Her chameleon cranberry cheeks Being kissed by the coming of winter. She holds my hand, As we walk out onto this body of water. I slip. She says, Don’t worry, mommy, I got you, She’s determined to walk across the lake before it thaws. Writing my bibliography on the wind with her laughter. I look down at her, the youngest of my mirrors, And say, Okay baby, don’t let go.

I don’t yet know how to write us. Fear of losing has kept the pen from my hand This love, both archaic and new, A creek spilling into her river. I am a rushing thing—a white capped current, Wild and polluted And I don’t want to contaminate you with the refuse I carry. Bruised Budweiser cans and Marlboro Red cigarette butts Looking a lot like PTSD and depression litter the shorelines of this body. And what of you? What sediments erode your agated heart? I did not come to muddy your lapping waves. Besides, none of that matters anyway. We are nature. Creek River Stone And every bend has brought us here – to this gentle confluence.

I know what they stole from you, how they sodomized your youth I know they left the faucets dripping kept the fixtures in their pockets. The house gets cold in the lonely months, but you can’t let the pipes burst. I remember when they shattered the snow globe and crushed the ballerinas. I know that all they left you with are shards of broken glass, but you don’t have to cut me, ‘cos I was there, as well. So don’t you think for one second I don’t understand. I know that hiding under the covers, never did make them go away, the same monsters that claw at your bed have visited mine, too. And I know you think Jim Beam is your closest friend, but I promise you, he does not love you the way I do. So, stop clinging to that bottle Take my hand instead We’ll go out into the fog together ‘cos I know-- I know! When the morning brume rises the White Horses are coming for you, and I hope that chariot-- Swings low- that sweet chariot- when it’s coming for- to carry you home- swing So low. So you only have to take one more step, and we’ll meet there in the clearing, where the honeysuckle sing and the hummingbirds dance Don’t you remember?