I’m so American I close my ports
of nourishment with a bit of bread
a bourbon, a burrito bowl, a nipple
a penis. I take in and in like oceans,
our landfills. My belly and arms swell,
striate like felled logs. Consider
the common inclination to love
into submission: “hush, baby.”
I do this for myself when I masturbate
to fall asleep. I have been a woman
for some time now, a uterine cavern,
an acute sense of danger. I want
to be a mother unlike my own,
and I am ashamed to think I think
so little of her
resilience, her desperate love of me
I do not want to bear a child,
because I do not want to feel
never alone. I’m so American I dream
of children discarded.
What happens to a child detained?
How many can I be a home to?
Cover Art by Stephanie Broussard