Warn the Young Ones

First war       She polishes the spine of her own
flesh       Tethered nerve      strangling cord       She

burial mounds       She rituals       She
corn stalks in rustling fields       Nothing tribe

nothing sex       Rock for riverbed       Notched
with flint       Second war       She needs less       Sequoia

burns       Cities       In her body      wrappings
of bodies       She debates running       She debates peeling

skin       She stops debating      begins praying without
knees       Not for rain       Prays rain       Holy nothing

unlaces nothing remembered nothing
forgiven—          Come others       Third war      

She is a void in the particle machine       She is dust     
Fourth war she loses the need for water       She loses

all taste       Rain brings each earthwormed corpse       Nothing
ugly       Turn not       Her face from the dead       She

resurgence       She fable of bee boxes
& honey       She ark of some lost territory

of animals       She zebras       She aardvarks      
She dredges the flooded streets of her      the gutters    

Fifth war       She grows stronger       All that can be
taken she takes       All that can be eaten

she swallows       All that can be broken she
pulls into her belly & releases       Nothing is whole     

Sixth war       She loses her appetite       Her bones brittle     
The cabbage in the broth bitters       She

pulls from ribcages       Hearts       Uses them
as weapons       Seventh war       The cord she began with      

Nothing like a noose       She would rest       Longs for nothing
but rest       Each threaded backbone slips its knot       Nothing

transforms       She wants to tell you this is the end       She wants