Thursday, May 5
COLLECTING STICKS The girls wore the names of their fathers like little necklaces
The boys wore the names of their fathers like jewels I mean like tattoos
The names of the mothers fell off
Like how a bird’s nest erodes inside months
It’s okay Months are always making new girls
Girls make themselves into new mothers the way a bird collects sticks
The girls wear their fathers’ names and then inscribe their husbands’ names: a tattoo of a necklace around the throat
The names of the mothers fell off
Pryor York Bond Moore
There aren’t any others I know
Mama York making biscuits in her little wood-burning stove
A mother didn’t have a name to bestow
The mother an antique lullaby A nest is only made of sticks and spit and dirt
A sweet voice breaks down into soil
Shouting into the closed-off years
Dies. and here’s another little self
Who dies. and pushes a piece of herself into the future (Emily Bludworth de Barrios)