nailah mathews
wildseed
in early evening black through which my
pre-sleep spliff smoke sexually confuses adolescent lightningflies,
as those restless poets
ascend from the basement for mealtime,
i: wonder what wasps do at night, wonder how long’s it gonna
take two ants to scrap this bumblebee’s broken body for parts,
i: think on the green-bellied frog drying its
gum-pink guts across summerhot blacktop,
its dozen unsmiling cousins all live
wet and fat in the crick where they hatched and
recall i too am older now than i was when i decided i’d die within a week
of 29, those days when
pa haggled come home with a husband,
(some unfailing young god terrible to behold, flexing against the sky,
all-american-arrogance straining its hinges)
or an education at least!
then i could not commit to poetry or the gruesome weight of healing, too
skittish to kiss a girl without an audience of men — !
i: exhale marvel at what i have become: alive,
well-fed, wildhaired since the faggots and their friends found no faults in me,
spotted cash/shelter/hormones between revolutions to
a gendertraitor on the upswing, having learned to roam far from all
familiar things into each uncertain ecstasy, to frot
in fields of pale heather, slit to sweet slit bursting purple honey,
now my infamous jenny-tails may never be convicted in a court of law.
thank fuck i survived.