UNTITLED

i’ve been whispered to

told secrets by brown girls who

grit teeth as greeting

who split open at night

and sew shut in day and

wish they were seen and

wish they weren’t seen

and wish they weren’t

seen as chasms as canyons

to be walked through and

explored with steel toe

and pick axe surveyed by

an adventurer’s eye a conquerer’s

boot and dirty nail

on the foothold and grip of

i’ve been whispered to

told desires of being more

than halved mountain

and chipped stone

and erosion and drought and

flood and seismic

shift and quake and bolt

being more than mishap

missed or misses target

practice for phallus

fashioned as god

and i call my mother

ask her if i can confide in her with

the secrets i’ve been told if i can

lay my broken rules upon her breast

this rock of my family

this rock of mine

and all she says is to remember

to knock the dust off my hands

before i come to her table