early pregnant not knowing

(moon)

 in six days

you’ll be round

enough, ripe enough

to eat

.

IV.

Early March:

this blanket is a grizzled band-aid.

it's every 2:30 morning 

sitting in the glossed enamel

cool latex moon 

at the cramped desk

my great grandfather made

out of a three quarter bed

to worry words:   

mother, ,,,,,, lover, mother, warrior-mother, mystic-mother,

prophet-moth, murderer-other her hem rote...

book up book dust—

and I will lose:  

words, what I need

to get ready for:  

(when I was five

night was a musty wool army

blanket.  always awake early, I stayed

the dark by hearing

my mother make her tea

alone downstairs.  The tink of the spoon: 

two sugars and a white stream

evaporated milk. 

I didn’t move until I heard her open

the kitchen door, shut it behind her, one of six

baskets of sorted wet whites

or colors wet and starting to freeze at her hip.