apostrophe
the nuthatch inserts itself
between feeder and pole
 

semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
 

ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
 

asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
 

comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
 

exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
 

colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
 

em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
 

question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
 

period
one blue egg all summer long
now gone

I know I’m godless when
my thirst converts water                into wasps, my country a carpet
                                                            I finger for crumbs. A country
my grandmother breeds
dogs instead of daughters             because only one can be called
                                                            home. I am trained to lose accents,
to keep a pregnancy
or cancel it out with                       another man. My tongue is
                                                            a twin, one translating
the other’s silence. Here
is my lung’s list of needs:               how to hold water
                                                            like a woman & not
drown. I want men
to stop writing &                            become mothers. I promise this
                                                            is the last time I call my mother
to hear her voice
beside mine. I want                        the privilege of a history
                                                            to hand back unworn
to grow out of
my mother’s touch                         like a dress from
                                                            childhood. Every time
I flirt with girls, I say
I know my way around                   a wound. I say let’s bang
                                                            open like doors, answer to
god. I unpin from
my skin, leave it to                          age in my closet & swing
                                                            from the dark, a wrecking
ball gown. In the closet
urns of ashes:                                   we cremated my grandfather
                                                            on a stovetop, stirred
every nation we tried
to bury him in was                          a war past calling itself
                                                            one. I stay closeted with
him, his scent echoing
in the urn, weeks-old                     ginger & leeks, leaks
                                                            of light where his bones halved
& healed. With small
hands, I puzzled                              him back together. I hid from
                                                            his shadow in closets
his feet like a chicken’s,
jellied bone & meatless.                His favorite food was chicken
                                                            feet, bones shallow in the meat
When he got dementia,
he flirted with my mother              he mouthed for my breasts
                                                            like an infant
We poured milk
into his eyeholes                             until he saw everything
                                                            neck-deep in white
the Chinese color
of mourning, bad                             luck, though the doctor
                                                            says everything is
genetics. I lock myself in
the smallest rooms that fit             in my mind, my grandfather’s:
                                                            a house we hired back from
fire. So I’ll forever
have a mother, I become                a daughter who goes by god. I urn
                                                            my ghosts, know each by a name
my own.

The half moon shows a face of plaintive sweetness
     Ready and poised to wax or wane;
A fire of pale desire in incompleteness,
       Tending to pleasure or to pain:—
Lo, while we gaze she rolleth on in fleetness
     To perfect loss or perfect gain.
Half bitterness we know, we know half sweetness;
     This world is all on wax, on wane:
When shall completeness round time’s incompleteness,
      Fulfilling joy, fulfilling pain?—
Lo, while we ask, life rolleth on in fleetness
    To finished loss or finished gain.