I have never had a mother, or, no longer have
or, once did, briefly, for a day or two.
Perhaps she was only mine
during the wet crown of hours I spun my skull
through her ripe & widening cunt,
then fastened to her nipple—
a botched daughter ugly with hunger.
Or maybe it was long before the orphaning,
before the womb fell quiet & her brain
went sour—gentle reader, won’t you permit me
this sweetness?—the morning she straddled
my father, a black flood of hair,
throat opened to god, the red muscle of her quickening
like the pulse of a dazzled child. Yes,
let it be there, in that heat-ravaged
moment as she caught the pale bloom of herself
in the mirror & looking
back over her shoulder,
fell in love with the animal engine of her body,
not for the daughter it could nurture,
but for the girl it would kill.