for Rachel
Inside the sacrament our daughter lies
and ages and three kinds of hunger sag
over the belt of her being ours. Such a
daughter we have in the shared spaces,
such a boulder comes tumbling, picks up
pigtails, permissions, her face grows angled
and painted, our cranial mush, yeah, we’d give
for her, the mortality clause, the sun
a cheap orange we tear with our nails.
And we look to feed, and we feed to love.
And when she eats she eats us alive.
And when she’s done we sweep ourselves
together, as we must, the dribble of us,
we cake to her toes, to her heels’ downturn,
a thin layer, leftover, hoping to soften
one or two steps on the ungiving ground.
