Listen: one daughter to another. Pith of my pith.
We've suckled the same marrow. So what if these horns catch on your hair
and you chew on all my good shoes? In the end, it’s you I want
when they take everything      but my name. This loose          tooth.

They call it the great forgetting            how all girls
            on the cusp of womanhood      lose their faculty
for anger.            Dumplings unravelling in the broth
a pot just on the edge of bubbling. You’ll never hear it          sigh.
Once      we asked mother why she mimes shadows      smiles
at the scorpion’s tail      when it strikes true. The body doomed
before it can write its own name. The sourer the broth
            the giddier the soul, she says
stirring her pot as something desperate
clangs            in her belly.

            Look      already i am willing to make amends            circumvent
the tangle that has brought us here. If a fish forgives its captor
is it no longer lunch? What is a girl anyway but a shape to be beaten into.
Magic bread. I’ll tuck my mold          deep inside          crunch my arrowheads
into a million matchsticks.        When i hear your war-trill
i will aim                                   at my own heart.

            See? There is a window            where my hunger used to be. Tomorrow
they’ll open me down the center          steal my percussion      buff
            my tools          so i can no longer carve footholds         for the devil.
I’ll be pearled              once dirt-tongued        ocean floor stink
now safe-keeper of claws        and ugly things. Yes,
            I swallow.
I just need to          find where my mouth is.

Are you listening? What i’m saying is            when they take the seeds,
do not fold back into the earth            in grief. Train your ears to mime hands
that catch secrets. Even the hiss of oil jumping in the pan

                                                                                                is a message
                                                                                                is a signal fire

to take this recipe and run        to the first tree            with the first wound
thumping with sap        where all women lie              soft-scabbed, planting crops
in each cosmic hurt              and all women hurt        All women        braid
memory as lifelines              have much too many teeth        to eat
so eat              won’t you? This pot blistering
with mother’s good knives.
            Won’t you lick the bowl clean?