doing so felt like the first true and good act I'd managed in my whole slipshod life

no keloid scars from boiling water

My granny back in Tennessee was born with the web of a caul over her head like a wedding veil

the first poems of mine that ever saw print were sent out under Etheridge's aegis, in envelopes he paid postage on

My half sister turned out to be a blowsy L.A. blonde

To make us appear even more fractious

I come to the culvert I had on the night of the assault imagined my blue corpse floating in

But every aspect of my existence has canted me in a dark space.

The boundaries of my skin grow thin as I kneel there squinting my eyes shut. For a nanosecond, I am lucent.

I type it with a jeweler's lapidary care