A year after he left I thought of the day he’d been 
sick and I’d cut my then-husband’s hair 
to cheer him up. First I combed it, 

This is the work of my life, to say with my
body itself You fuckers you cannot
tell me who to kill.

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother’s house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate

You would stand under a sign saying I Like To Be Touched and Held and when someone came and stood under the sign saying I Like To Touch and Hold they would send the two of you off together.

You could never really say what it is like,
this hour of drinking wine together
on a hot summer night, in the living room

  and that’s how I almost died
     of foolishness
        in beautiful Florida.

What could be worse 
than its body 
inching out of the dark stuff

nothing that you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the old pebbles

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? 
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air—
an armful of white blossoms,

The Cubans are vaccinating anything
live they can find and burning the rest.
My childhood pours gasoline over the toppled cows and pigs,