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.