Reclaimancy #19 [or, The Snake Angulating Out]
from Impressive Woman (Nightboat 2021)

I'm allegedly always the last to know bad news. 
My grandmother & sister take turns telling me about myself. 
Both would end the world for me. A need for superheroes stopped 
when I began donning my own cape & mask. I’m a single-bound leap

from each woman in my blood. They all claim my body 
but each calls a different name for what lives 
around the arteries. I know women in my family 
still hold me in the fragility of boyhood I grew

gloriously. I see how they love the men around them 
& I believe I desire less affection. I have learned to dress 
from divas who adorned me in stage light instead of lit match.
But every woman in my bones has a specific relationship to fire, 

another to rain. Each of our callings begins elemental. I seek 
to answer my call branching from gulf & bayou & desert.
I desire an atmospheric home for the passages of women 
emerging by riverbankshorelines with knowledge of floodwalls & 

better worlds. I find my place in the formation of bound 
bible genealogies in every particular order: cowgirls, sharecroppers, 
school teacher, pageant queens, rocket scientists, deputy constables, 
gossips, prophets, mothers, aunties, sisters, cousins, nieces, daughters 

& daughter’s daughters & [ ]. We are my mother’s only one. 
Still, she counts us both as her offspring. She named us both 
in her womb & I tell her sorry for never being able to reproduce 
such magic & hiding inside her son for so long. I tell her I kept him 

alive, the way she prayed she could. I tell her she loved 
me before I could fix my mouth to ask for help. I apologize 
to blood, bones, & passages for years of mistrust. I carve 
her a trumpet out of pearls, ready always for report.