This will be my last one.
"I flee to the edge of this country in the two-stag dark,
stand on an escarpment undoing itself in ash.
Not yet a boy, I eat still the figs that
bloat with inverted blossoms.
When halved, sometimes a blond wasp
encauled in its violet lobe.
This, of course, is the dream body eating its omen.
"California moons.
A coast breathing oranges.
A fire fast as horses.
Duplicitous husband.
A steel grate border, extending its long law into the ocean.
A wave halved.
Never trust beauty to represent brutality.
"I can give you no language that will
free the child from her cage, make no meaning that unfloods
the world, no verse that can unfire a bullet.
"I eat the spine of God to stay alive.
"Eldest daughter to an eldest daughter of an eldest daughter,
I citizen three child mothers at the river's door--
obedient bruiseroot, rebel virgin, doomed bride.
"Translate passage.
The girl abandoned in a sinking marshland
will never be named in America.
America is just another boy with bad intentions,
another flooding plot of discovery
drowning its ever lousier yellows.
How many daughters have been paid to the ship?
Dissolution to witness my own water burial.
"At the cutbank, knife the rope and split the dress,
made in myself taut as an elm bow drawn,
thighs seized red holding a dormant knot.
In every father's cruelty to his daughter
is a husband recognizing the danger of himself--
every man a heat-trapped rancor, every promise a demon's gem.
"Mirrorborn, the wolfgirl will learn
two names in the twinned land, tense with bloodmemory.
Checkpoint-- border patrol asks place of birth.
I speak.
Exit the vehicle, legs open.
"The moon enthroned in oaks shines
through the woodlace over the state.
A father in the grasses.
A headlight cleaves mother and boy.
Another child at the edge of this country.
Another body denied a metaphor.
What regret can be daughtered deeper."
Yeah, I'm still grappling with it.
Uh-huh.
I think some of the things with that, we don't forget.
But I think it's also--
it's always very powerful to realize this
has been going on for so long--
for so long, right?
Coinciding with sort of structures of power,
and how those have begun, and sort of--
because those in power decided, just based on the images
that you shared, these torture devices.
Mm-hmm.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
So much.
If you go back and look at just the invention of race,
it's like how that man is sort of depicted in the archive,
it's really wild.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
Engaging with this has allowed me to sort of look at time
in a pulled-back kind of way, and imagine another future--
a different future.
And I shared some of my work with a couple of poets,
[? Raquel ?] being one of them, because I was just--
I was really grappling with the ethics.
I was just like, can I even speak about this?
Like what am I doing?
And I said, I forgot that when I learned
that I had a half sister, she was in juvenile detention.
And I sent her Leaves of Grass, which
is, like, I shouldn't have sent her that.
And then I started remembering, all of my cousins
and uncles who have been--
sort of who've had brushes with the law.
And I'm like, why didn't they come up first?
And it was a protective instinct, right?
It's not that I'm embarrassed, it's
that that's not mine to tell.
My strength is critique.
I can speak to the institution, so.
You did an amazing job.
I'm really blown away, and just thankful
that you were able to be part of this to contribute.
We're just lucky to have you three here.
So, thank you.