I’m thirteen when my cousin teaches me

how to bathe. We carry buckets

from Auntie’s kitchen, limping

to the pendulum of water swinging.

Undressed, we stand side by side

on the concrete fl or. Carol’s hands

don’t handle like my mother’s did:

propping me in the bathtub beside

my brothers, constructing an assembly line

of our limbs, as she lathered

and polished us clean. This was before

boys became unlike girls, before

our mother, whose flesh we ate,

whose nipples we cracked,

was exiled from us. Carol instructs me

wordlessly. In deliberate movements,

she rubs across her torso’s cross

and sweeps beneath each breast.

I mimic her gestures: tipping the bucket

slightly, so as not to dirty the water.

I watch how easily she bares

her supple body. She wears her nakedness

like it’s been woven from air.

Carol points to a spot on my back.

I resist the urge to hide my chest.

Tucked inside her is what hangs

from my brothers like pockets turned

inside out. I tilt my head like a mirror,

envy the gold beads hugging her waist,

and bring the washcloth to where I’ve missed:

not knowing when and from whom

I learned to be ashamed.

Marigolds of Fire

1.

He had a caribou’s face. Once he let me

lick the sadness there. It tasted of salt

and moss-covered rocks. He grew the beard

of a mountain goat. He scaled the face

of a mountain. Lying beside him, I stared

into the face of faceless waters whose velvet

antlers cradled us. He wore a bison’s

face. Sometimes he wallowed in the dust,

tossing his head from side to side,

wearing deep grooves into the braided

rug. Mornings, he refused to betray

his dreams. He had an antelope’s face—I could

go on like this. I liked how he led me, almost

a shove, how he kissed me—mercy—how I

kissed him back: my back against the foyer

wall. Sometimes we called to each other

like birds. It wasn’t ritual—how can I

explain—he laced his fingers, made his knees

a ladder. I braced myself on his backward horns.

I climbed him then, into the tree.

2.

In the end, we were delivered back

to the strange mud from which we crawled.

The bed gave us back, unastonished,

our aching, separate bodies.

This is skin, it told us. Skin, I wrote.

I would commit its meaning to memory.

3.

A football player slaps the butt

of a passing girl. She turns

to face a silvered hand dangling

from each player’s wrist: windless

chimes. Under their helmets,

the teammates wear the same blank face.

—Can I tell you I wanted them all?

4.

In the beginning, there was blood or the threat

of blood. Formed from clay, we sought a fire

that could finish us. We sewed a garland

of marigolds. We ate good blossoms whole.

5.

He takes his coff e with cream