January

First poem since October

This year, there was nothing made. You can't even find
your precipice. Enter me with purpose. (no matter) I imagine my uterus
shedding like leaves from an autumn tree. Apples falling.
Such small members of disaster. Shrapnel. Discharge.
Stigma and skin. Somehow ash. Somewhere exchange.

This year I fought for crumbs.
I still do. So much of the unwanted
descends. Blood. Bananas. The birds nest, now empty.
Storms to keep you there. Pure ravaging guile.
Somewhere between August and November,

I remember losing my breath. Falling cold took its toll.
Sometimes it finds its way back. Crystalline and returning.
What to do with the warmer flow, the earth's red lava
erupting from each crevice? Let it mix with water.
It will find its way. I am not so sure.

This year fell hard on my thighs, my torso, my carrying muscles.
I expected it in my hips. I think of her, how it all backed up,
how it dried like a transplant that never took root. Not like a clipping.
Like a dragging. How she still can't look at the faces of mothers
as she strolls. How divided it makes us, this desire to make.