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KATE DELAY THE GOLDEN CALF Coming off the mountain, heat fell through the treeline & doubled branches into outstretched arms. Where I tasted & saw. Knelt underneath the copperhead of my whole life. Here: the cicada squall of everyone who came before me. Here: I did not wreck what was given. For a time, a night even believing couldn't end. When God's people looked, they saw themselves in me. Glint-gatherer. Good girl. I sucked venom from my hand. There: rot spared. Where I spit grew the sweetest honeysuckle. Where I spun my tires & coughed dust into the air. I spun all I gathered into gold. I worshiped worship itself. Melted down the necklace hung on me & saw what we make of desperation. A long tenor note breathed in the world. Of the world. & there is no shame in us. No shame left for us. The calf I've made is not an image but a shape through which to see. THE YEAR —after james mckenna I would be beautiful I would name the thing decimating me, making me a decimal Name the thing & be a forgiver in the hundredths, the thousandths It would be my hands, hands of a thousand mended pieces I would never find their end I would find my anger under melting snow I would want it to snow here, that sort of beautiful I would find my anger & it wouldn't look like a father Wouldn't eclipse lamplight with its fist, hold my wrists in one grasp It would be my hands I would know its face, it would be a bit rounder Mappable, by some sort of geometric formula It would grow its own mouth I wouldn't see a father's face, a mouth of less than a thousand revisions Wouldn't overhear a father's voice dividing In the next room, a father wouldn't say what a father says I wouldn't hear it I would be high, doing a thousand-piece puzzle Wouldn't be high in a thousand pieces I would drink more glasses of water, the pieces would be less like pieces I would go to sleep with my sleep inside me The sleep would be inside me I wouldn't dream that a father's condemnation sounds more like a song I could recite I wouldn't even remember its tune I would wake into my anger I wouldn't find a dead end Wouldn't grow so small So small I could rest my fingers between my ribs I would know what time would tell I would let my anger be anger instead of a father I would never find its end I would be that beautiful |