Researchers Find Mice Pass On Trauma
to Subsequent Generations
Even before I was born, before my father
took my mother’s head in his hands,
her black curls like sprockets
sprung from his palms, & held her face
under the lukewarm water of our tub,
her belly a heavy globe—my only
armor—pressed against that bright white
porcelain, before I took my first breath
two months after my father failed
to cinch it, her, I mastered a palpable fear
of choking. It’s all a mind game, Dad
would say, shoving another M&M
in my mouth: swallow. Pseudodysphagia—
even before I learned the word I knew
the shame that came from fearing
fear rooted in the fiction of my mind—hers
& hers & hers & hers.
Delayed Communiqué from Poet to Astronaut
First thin skin of snow stop so white
the breaking wave against its slate
sky so close to its lonely
end again always stop sorry I haven’t
written in days stop I found myself
telling the puppy he’s lucky
& cursed to never feel compelled
to hold his face against the wind
to watch the futility
of water rushing toward shore
only to be thrown back & in
stop to know that complication
is beauty I said & he showed me
I’d never understand the simplicity
of chasing a leaf though I’ve been
in love stop I thought I had nothing left
to say stop there is a woman behind
the birth of words inside me
stop she’s waiting to forget your name.
