Dishtowels

Embroidered with transgressions for each day of the week

Clipped words

Clipped again to letters

What ransom note?

What poem?

What do you know of a stolen education?

Marking favorite passages with hour hands

Palmed from the ubiquitous pocket watch

Learn to speak self

Forgive your own joyfulness

Tweezing away the scales

When did that start?

Wake into the knowledge of this translation

Woman is an unfamiliar

You were part of that other change

Learn words of self

Transform and practice the stance that keeps you

Eyes at a level that allows for seeing

Mine were parents who wanted me to know things they didn't

Toes dug down and rooting

Mine were parents

I’m here at the breakfast table

Deep in the inherited facts

Picking one more flashing scale from my flesh

Save them with lint balls and laughter in a vial made of sea water

Who was grandma really?