You stand behind your own head
Unknown to yourself
Like your own mother
Hell bent on nurturing and murder
Exact as tucking in a child

Or a body, safe and underground,
Beckoning me into dry clothes
And a decent supper
That will blot out my destiny
Like seven years with the hill folk.

I am a vegetable passing through your system,
A great gourmet curry dinner
Long since shat out in the toilet,
Demanding my place on your tongue yet.

When you write of
Other loves you’ve known, other rags
You’ve kept by the bed,
Of the old country of
My ancestors, not yours
It is not my America
Nor yours, you seek to emulate:
Those women who lie,
Vulva to vulva,
With their own absurd sense of patriotism.