C H R O N O LO GY RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS
I don’t remember when her name begins in the world. I forget what maiden word the water made against my mother’s tongue. Unbroken thirst. Black earth. Darkness, singing blue & green. Fruit trees of her hands. Animals roar her blood into bright air. Ghosts scrape brown rivers upon her skin. The teeth of the dead tear her unborn words into rafts. My mother’s maiden name is Pray. She is a pure being of blood, promise, trouble. Perhaps, I was there, gaining details. Wonder corrodes our armor of ribs & speech. Contours breaching the wave that will widow our family. Her breath going down & staying beneath its darkest tongue. The water recalling who the earth believes she was before the god. I want to open my mother’s dead hands & listen. Let the human record show our slant of suffering. Let cum & rain lash chokecherry leaves with desire, pain, imagination. Show me how the art of losing masters each morning. The mind of
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