Here’s a song for each of your legs
& if I say future, you’ll reward me
with a concert of warnings so shrill my tongue
could slip and eat its own life.
But afterwards, our lives will become
easier.
We’ll still have enough stones
to last a lifetime, enough soil to bury
the old ones. Even as the sores
on our hands spread & our voices
sink back in our throats like tiny
islands, we’ll wait
for our mothers’ stash of recipes
to float up on the west coast &
the postwar gallop of circus freaks
who’ll pick our flesh for a way back in.