a city map is sewn in the scalp;
looped in the goat-milk, or spit out,
tongued in silky blades of stomped
down grass.

i’m crowned with high-pitched fingers
clenched in fur.
in octaves only shades can bear, i simmer
in their holy cradles.
i become the roughened corner of a mouth
grinning at its own joke.

there, the receding home in ranch-style polaroids of a dirty blond stranger and my mother squinting in the sun; some home not mine or yours.

ventricles, which
in a woman’s left grows tiny,
and in a man’s more supple.
i keep alive by milking goats.

some like lifelines, some like ulcers
the city streets are braided in my hair.

samantha lucero 2018 ©