LYING IN

On bed rest desire becomes a sheet. 

Let it fall over me

without hands. Let it.

Before I knew I was in danger

I did not get up. After,

when I say how long I lay down

how can I make you understand it was an order?

In bed what time has done to me is 

what it cannot do 

to him. I become the mortal 

pregnant with a god, if only he can 

be born. 

*

Whatever happens don’t blame yourself

the ER nurse says when I am

diagnosed with threatened abortion.

She holds my shoulder with one hand.

With the other, crushes a Vicodin. 

Can I take that before it’s over?

Try to gather yourself, the nurse says

so I look for my body everywhere:

The placenta dangles off like fruit about to fall half-mine half- 

*

Forget mothers. 

The living woman scrapes out the unliving 

every month to ferment 

and when I bleed I cannot tell the season. 

Because California 

but not just that.

Because I am careful to forget. 

*

I will not stand without a husband. 

I will not drink water

without his placing the straw

between my lips.

Watching mobile women round out

is like witnessing the world 

have sex 

with not-you. 

He does love me. I do I do

vows turned tantrum

over something like chewing gum

but gifts are fragile bonds

and nothing sticks 

to satisfy my sapling doubt.

*

There are moments I wish he would thrust just once

where the half-dead fetus quickens

but then I blink.

Can’t you just be gracious? Maybe every woman 

has a voice that says this often.

*

Beddridden, a riddle:

the bed does not stay the same throughout. 

Body-logged, it sinks

gradually. Even now when I sit on the edge 

it is in the shape of my old belly. The bed ridden,

my self rewritten. 

*

In labor I have to tell my body many times 

letting go is now bringing to life.

But is it too much blood? I say. 

The doctor jokes Are you a virgin?

I see the head as anticlimactic. Push. Don’t push. 

Beyond the numbness, each contraction. 

If there is only enough placenta left to keep one of us

keep him. 

*

I know women since the beginning 

have healed. What I don’t understand 

is how the body can hold 

a cock again inside it. 

I have no choice but to give birth 

to everything now, every thought 

that comes to mind.

I curse my husband,

sometimes rant against the baby. 

I hate most the sound of my own 

demanding.

The dead don’t hold a grudge

when they’re not missed

unless they have the fortune

of coming back.

The moment I first grab our son 

to my chest I say

goodbye?

*

My milk, even my voice 

holds the scent of his blood 

mixed with my time. 

I make my kisses heard

like tissue paper on his newborn hair. 

And when at four I tickle him 

his held breath all over again 

stitches us skin to ghost to skin. 

In some ways I am gone. 

In wildfire ash

I teach our son the alphabet 

O, spin your little finger in it.

The world says wean your grief

before it outweighs love.

What if mine does,

what if I put a screen in front 

of my boy at noon

to hear myself think.

How should I beg.

What mother.

I lost the baby, I did

even though he lived.

***

THE WILLOW BOOK

You were placed like wings are placed 

as if they’ll never be needed to leave with    

the way the beautiful tuck in their extras

or are tucked into average extraneous light.

Perfect landing the doctor said and said the same

of the needle feeding my vein.           

*

I miss hearing the wind from inside     

where I can’t feel it.

What part of a tree did I expect you to be?

I put Daphne on the nursery door       to remind myself 

what I would never let anyone chase you into

but then you were born

and each time I unwrapped 

your femaleness from your diaper 

I considered every feeling you would hide from me.

Each time I wipe you I am touched

with envy.       

*

You made the water you broke.  

You made me sicker than I could stand 

to live a little longer.             

For every night there is another night I’ve missed. 

Maybe it is my ambivalence            

about being outlasted.          

Whenever you are in your crib

my life feels final

or like it has never been.        

Never me         always mine.

*

Orange growing bitter within its skin, 

why would you speak?

Fruit alone in time pretending it can’t rot 

because it is             held in,     

each word you say is still just pulp in your voice.

*

All night your brother’s blacksmith sounds 

distract me

while

your long-into-life silence

plays a morse code in my uterus.

Are you there?

Pleasure is the uterus contracting

emptiness. Since you, it asks me

what will ever be as good as holding

a new life?                 

My own.

*

Sometimes I call you “mama”

so why would you look at me and say “mama”                   

Why would you speak at all if the Word is you?    

You are so brave to ask us nothing.

                       Ask goddammit.           

Make the crib yours,

not just that twinkling lab dish.

You shouldn’t be accountable for what I make.

Or do I want to be praised for        

who you are?

*

I wanted a daughter first so I would not ignore her.

Also, I didn’t want to be ignored.

Maybe your brother will not blame you

for being

if I praise him for everything  

you do:

See how she looks at you when she stares at the wall.

See how she learned to fly inward after we left her crying out.

*

What will your rage look like when everyone is done saying 

you have my eyes?              

Here comes the butcher without his meat    leaving a knife 

like a finger in your fist.      

You will be wanted by more than me.  

Let them want.

Let your want grow first.

*                 

If you were my lover I would beg you to speak speak

I practice a voice that will make you adult

but you are not my lover      then

you are the mother I was always after    

lie back

desire is no longer inside me,

you are my  

uncertainties

*

Your skull shut fast to keep me out.

I guess I could say your lack of babbling 

is not a drought but the river          

taking itself back.

For whom did I open my mouth?

I didn’t for years in public,  

braiding my arms as many times as I could 

through my mother’s legs.

I was already mourning the land of arrivals.

No matter how early it was always

with the sense of running late.        

*

In first grade I used to stare

at babies until they looked away.         

It is our secret that you have never reached for my face

or exchanged my nursing gaze.          

*

I asked my mother what she loved more

than me:

No one    

But who is greater       

she said At what      

If one day you should want to know what you are 

less than,

I will run a faucet and never turn it off.      

*

Listen well.

Make sure anything you love will burst                   

both if you blank blank blank          or you don’t.

I will change one mood a day to the word

speechless.

*

What do you need language for to be female

to say “help” to whom 

to say “am yours” to say “I do”

Who am I if not your

practice man?             

*

Don’t answer.

I feel what the wind feels:

not touch but the difference of direction.

Forget my mouth moving sound out toward you.

Reach for the bars instead, pull

yourself

along my night mind.

All children grow into questions.       

You end

but never as I left you.       

***

YOU’VE BEEN ON EARTH SO LONG ALREADY

All my life all I’ve wanted was to be myself

and someone else. Not theirs but them.

My shame about this greed made

me hesitant with other children.

I wanted what they wanted, but apart:

I tried to make it, spooned what I could

in shallow mental dishes I stacked

all night and poured through

my neediest hole, which opens only

for medicine or extreme misunderstanding.

My teeth browned from too much

thirst too late.

My eyes bulged from noticing

what I wasn't meant to be.

There was a playground which I went to

—and can’t take you.

The first thing I did daily

was look for a place to hide, or flee.

There were plenty of gates and wide enough trees

but I stayed off-center, just beyond

the sprinkler’s way.

The other children played until they snacked

around me. Sometimes they cried.

Sometimes they looked consoled by what they couldn't have.

No not now

The boundary of things. The boundary of time.

I wish this for you—come soon—to be withheld.

They were so freely asking for more world.

***

MID-SUPPER

I am moving on, where am I?

Between mother and child: let me

pass the plate forever.

They have both sat and

gotten up from the table for the same

solitary meal.

For what I am giving up, help me follow

how I used to get through it:

undressed pretzel style

pull the checkered curtain

behind me

for the window to sing

with the closeness of cold.

When the song is exhausted

let me blow out the

mother left over

let down

the absolute child.

So this way is forward.

***

SO I FINALLY SLEPT

At first I was afraid

of what felt like mutual need

but soon his initial comfort

was just like cornsilk

stripped with the ear

and compelled to the beautiful

dead. He had evolved too,

he said, as any irregularity

in a mammal and had crafted

forever into an answer of milk

from his bodilessness

that no one would drink.

I showed him what still

swayed inside me and

how grueling it was to be

the harbor for someone else’s

thirst rather than the drink itself.

He didn’t mind that I had not

believed him. Like a sleeved arm

into an ocean suddenly full

of another power of movement

and also with all suddenness

taken away he put me to sleep

by a simple asymmetrical gesture

no patting or sweet departures

just the exponential side

of his face on my face and he

never came back for me faithful.