Fear fear, shriek the unseen cicadas in a borrowed
language all summer long. It gets into a pattern:

the cut diamond of their chorus shredding the air
into thin ribbons of heat. The abandoned fountain

dry as the loins of any stone cherub. I go where
chance takes me, or is it luck—that sun-bleached

swan boat steered by nothing but the lake’s caprice
through the knot of shadows cast by a willow grove.

That shadow play of mind : foliage : mind : foliage
until the water turns murky as unanswered prayers—

chance, a codeword for surrender; prayers, a prelude
to trust. I lie down beside the rock worn to myth

by the lake’s ancient murmurs. The boat I came in
has turned to a swan, the swan now saunters toward me

as a god. Fear ebbs from me in ripples tainted by the moon
as I seek that rare kind of tenderness that lies between rescue

and ruin, guiding the god’s feathered touch over the ivory
magnolia of my belly, steering his calloused hands over

mine, saying, here are the oars. Here is the impossible rowing.

In the underbelly I’ve rot for forest
I’ve rocks for waste—& when I venture
past the terracotta pots for homes squatting

on their little plots their aches, past brick
& schools where my living fish
are learning to sing the blanks, our erasure

from the history books—where neighborhoods fade
at the desert’s edge I stumble into the dumping
ground, the burial yard of our domestic

detritus, our cultural junk:
love-or-violence-stained mattresses
disemboweled & springs

like broken limbs stabbing through, the hulls
of busted washing scrubbing
fucking machines & every

carcass of steel, condoms seeping
their waxy milk into the dirt, mountains bodied
of babydolls with missing eyes & empty

casings of bullet shells &
plastic bags like pregnant bellies, innards
the buzzards have pulled clean—

A funeral shroud for
each forgotten child, strand
of frost-flowers across

a face, curtain blooming
full of the nothing
wind is. Air through

papers will be gentler
than an immigration controller
who at the border

spreads your passport open
on the desk to
better see your face.

Air encircles towns, permits
stars to appear where
cloud had covered, gives

the space that renders
you and I of
world-collapsing, insufficient we.

Air occupies the lung
and the wing, giving
us ideas of lift

and all we know
of breath. Morning air
means you did not

die overnight. No living
thing is not held
in air, not drawing

in the breath another
living thing has just
let out. A medevac

helicopter rises into it.
A missile trained for
human temperature spirals through.

Air fills rafts floating
on the sea between
worlds. Air fills bells

ringing along coastal fields
where white chalk cliffs
speak to gray water.

A choir’s voices fill
with sound. Invisible it
enters and departs all

rooms. At edges
of continents held upright
by air, girls struggle

down a road. Air
of France, air of
Italy, air of Hungary:

as though air meant
razor wire, private police.
Air carries no documents.

Air of United States.
Air of Mexico. Air
of Honduras. Air as

light as itself trespassing
lightly every human line.
The girls raise empty

hands. The guards raise
guns. A ballot slips
on skidding air. Ditch

weeds, ditch flowers, air
resting there in fall’s
first coolness. Turning away.

He treated the blood
like it was consecrated.
Didn’t your mama ever tell you about the blood? he asked.

I thought of church. What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

But I knew this couldn’t be that type of blood.

Daddy asked me again, about conversations that should have been
but he knew, never were. She’d left me in a cloud of doubt
about everything else, so it was no wonder that she had
held her lips closed – offering no balm of gilead – about matters
such as this.

I only shook my head at him,
panic-strickened; sure that I’d somehow,
perhaps even in my dreams, sat in glass
and broke up private parts still unseen, still untouched
by the hands of any man.

All I knew was it had awakened me with a start –
brand new Cinderella sheets – wet Cinderella’s face,
bloodied and battered by my restless,
sweaty, cramp-filled sleep.

Eyes opened wide upon discovering
the blood came from me. I mashed
childish hands against cotton panties stained
pink – but not girlish pink.

I had hoped with firm pressure I could stop
the flow but the blood and the belly tightening cramps
made me seek out daddy’s wisdom

I cut myself down there, I whispered. Still baby-voiced,
still unknowing of life’s mysteries flowing between
my legs.

Daddy wrapped me up in gentle whispers of the secrets
that mothers should tell little girls about the changing
of their anatomy.

It was years later before I recognized
the courage it took for daddy to go out
to the little country store
and shop for just the right type of Kotex
to arm his baby girl with that morning;

the courage it took for him
to smile even though he probably wanted to cry for
his little girl who had bled and died
under the cover of Cinderella sheets.