to any God that made mefeel ashamed.  Girls are takers,Mama used to say. I took every lesson     she gave me, learned  to swim out of my body & abandon it. With incense I burned pagesuntil a perfect eye stared back.  God drilled a hole to make us see. See? Mine is filthy.   He, too, eyed me each day afterschool,   …

Not the storm, but the calm. Not the flurry of attention               called to the sky.Not the rumour of a hurricane on the horizon.Not humidity, the mosquitoes rising               like smoke from the fields. Not a history of revisions we call             …

  Each morning is the same            but I can’t help but look again and again: skin smooth peony petal, vanilla-ice-            cream-cool; hair a ripple of milk pulled back too tight (though sometimes I forget the aching);             even my eyes are eggshells. Only…