If your mother’ s like mine wanting you honeyed and blithe
you’ ll get cooked by getting evicted
since the mothers can teach with a dustpan the tons of modes of tossing.
And the fathers will lift your eyes too-early-too-open:
the fathers can creep up on anything when it’ s still too wet
to cloister with their weeping and strand you like a seed
or cook at the carnivals with the can-do caroling
and storefronts and foodstuffs and annulments and Scotch
and off-handed fucking and walking out and moving on
until they’ re cooking the drift of you wanting a whole bayou up in you
and cooking and cooking the gist
of you needing your crannies hot with a good man’ s body-silt
until your head is stuffed with a pining for diapers
and the most minuscule spoons made mostly of silver
and Ajax too and Minwax Oh
in this the dumbstruck story of the American female
as a cut of terracotta and some kindling in a dress
while howling at the marrow of the marrow of the bone.