in a thicket of insurmountable haze

I am set apart from the funeral taking place

around me, relief

adds to my face another invisibility –

quietly I summarize demons.

did any woman ever consciously

think: I’d like to be like this, and then

grow into features, feminine features, that resembled

everything ever offered

by the sea?

now is the time, I finally know

poets by their poems only, musicians

by their songs, and do not need to speak

but in my language, which is

acidic, sulphurous, and clearly

not anyone else’s.

fucked, as if desired, as if there was a

choice of positions

— bent over the hood and slammed into —

if your voice fades, another one doesn’t need to

stammer

birth control, had you had it

you wouldn’t have left for the world.