Come. Pray. Know

1. come. pray. know histories. today

                   is mother’s birthday. she insists on

                   dying. offer her a framed memory, 

                   her maiden name clotted in a map older

                   than “america.” she will refuse, turn

                   away. grief sharpens the gales of wit.

                   again, she abandons.

2. a twice born girl knows to rotate a tomb, 

                   suspend mother’s crude gape, temper

                   a piston with cane syrup. terror is the knotty

                   clutch of an umbilical cord, an archive pulsing

                   with the carriage

                   of empires.