 I am working on a couple of series. One is about the mother's body. I'm a mother. I lost my mother last year. And so they're a series of poems that are about being in a body that is a mother's body and losing the body of your mother. And they're kind of juxtaposed intentionally in an odd way. So I'm going to read a couple of those. Some of them are obvious, and some of them are not. Enjoy with me, if you will. I'm in a weird place when you sit on traffic for a while, but you have like poems on your brain, and you're like, OK, what am I going to read next? And then what am I going to do? And then what am I going to do? But you're like in traffic the whole time. So I've been in my brain for a little bit too long. It looks like, sorry. In the morning when you encounter a large piece of your uterine lining on the seat of the toilet, you forget that your hair smells like coconut oil. The warm corners of your body, a cacophony of earthy spice. Turmeric or curry, perhaps nutmeg for sure. Fresh garlic and ginger on your fingertips and in what you are cooking. In the evening when you discover a small bottle of liquor is not enough to get through the length of your evening, you remember that your feet are rough, the bending of your body, an aching journey of continual pain, creak or weariness perhaps, popping for sure a giving and a weakness of the body and what is in your heart. Sometimes it is the glance in the rear view of a small body in a small mirror, all curly head and grossed in book, leg crossed, ankle slung over knee, so real, so present and yet just a slip of a thing. Really, barely enough mass to register weight. In 5,000 pounds of metal and motor you are hurtling down an asphalt stretch 10 miles above the speed limit that reminds you what easy trust you hold in loose fingers on the steering wheel. You sit up and tighten your grasp. In which your daughter makes friends with the neighbor boys and suggests truth or dare, but when dared to kiss one boy pecks him on the shoulder real quick and is because that is gross, innocent, limbed and does not see how the older boy puts words in the mouth of the younger, how he is ain't no fun at the homies can't have none gonna get himself a kiss and your daughter is just six. Stands sway back, belly forward, one knee cocked and just wants her turn so she can say something gross to do like bugs or butts, but it's been too beautiful like are you prepared to lock her up and you're gonna need to watch that from the moment she learned to smile and it's today, right now, for the first time you ever really want to do this. Think of thick walls and locking doors. You can see how she's enough to be a mouthful and they are already drooling. When I think of, my throat becomes a foul trap. Little old ladies would say not a very nice place with her throat and I would nod agreeing except I fear dislodging the foulness. Afraid it is rancid between my molars already, a cruelty with relish and I always knew I could enjoy wielding my breath like a weapon, scorch everyone with caustic truth expelled from my throat, a radioactive fog. I keep foul places locked up. I keep you out when I think of, which is always. When your nipple slips from her glutted mouth you fall asleep dreaming of her churning your bones into milk. You dream of flight with these newly hollowed bones and lips wrapped around them like straws. How gladly you make meal of yourself for her consumption. A feast you will call love as if animals could refrain from feeding when hungry. When she rises shaken from betwixt you're still quivering thighs and you fall in love knowing like earthquakes everything has shifted and she has tongued the dark sticky sense of your being like all the way up in your pussy and it was something to want if not something permanent and if you cannot last at least burn as if animals can resist snuffling prey. So sometimes people are like, oh we're not fucking anymore and you're like, wait what? And it happens in life and you go, I wasn't, I didn't know the last time we got down was the last time we were gonna get down, have you got anybody, anybody feel that one? You weren't ready, I wasn't ready. I was not ready for it to be over. I thought at least one more time up in there and it didn't happen and I still hold out hope, I do. Yeah, and sometimes just a little revenge. Just a little, I think Rihanna said it best when like I think the scars in your heart are so mine, like tell me if she ever cuts this deep. Yeah, I was like, yeah, get it. You decide your deepest cut is shaped like your ex-lover's new lover's pussy. You compare it to the picture your ex-lover has shown you of her new lover's mouth, always wide open, always loose-lipped fleshy. You compare it to the picture your ex-lover doesn't show you, size of the new lover's spread, knees of Kimbo, you imagine the new lover's lips between your clenched teeth how they would look as a deep cut bleeding. A small psalm as you go. Oh, do you remember small throat between your thighs drinking me in with greedy gulping? Oh, how I hope I haunt every mouthful. Remind you how sweet a liquid swallow you become. So then my pussy got mad at me. Was like, look, talking about all these other bitches. What you gonna do about me? So I wrote a series of poems, you know, like you do when you're a poet for your pussy. I'm not alone here, right? I'm not alone, right? You know you got a series about somebody's pussy anyway. I call them the lost scriptures. And you gotta imagine that they're redacted, that they're like found scraps somewhere where my pussy has run away to. The lost scriptures prelude before the dedication page. We are all clear this will be a story of departure and desertion. Feel free to read between the lines as you determine protagonist and antagonist. There are no enemies in this story. Bad guy wakes up with wet panties again alone. The lost scriptures, part one, chapter three, verse redacted. In which we pick up with our hero as she packs up and leaves. Again, it's a streamlined process, always on a clear night, always after dark. This hero be disappearing act, be three ring circus, madness, poof, and gone. Just like that. Dear reader, this is the telling of the last time my pussy disappeared on me and perhaps how she might come back. You will have to get chapters one and two from her lips directly. This is where I come in. The lost scriptures, part three, chapter redacted, verse 69. Rememberance to how sweetly I come when called in which I beckon while I take. Welcome is always a laden table, always a sweet mouth return. This love be twist and burn, consumption, anguish. Dear reader, this be how it was she came back to me, like not easy but right, like found beast in the open palms of a lover. The lost scriptures in paper and miniature prints along the seam. Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. Cry her a river, tell her what love is. Signed, sealed, delivered. Dear reader, find your lips shaping plea. Sing, stay, just a little bit longer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.