Chiron in Cancer

broken baby boy

Break the chain
tug and spill the beads              unmanageable 
swollen foot, wounded ankle

pearls on my brow
a taste for the butler on my tongue

Sink        (don't recline)        fall        (not surrender)
down to ocean floor extended

wonder preserved

diving bell, pinned butterfly
you know Mama and Papa loved you
as I could love you 

freefall or stitched up? confined?
some fit binds         (horsebit)
others don't



I held his hum like a radio
and lost my cool, again
easy in a mini skirt, 35°C
homesick for a husband 



open wound         eyeball         river         mountain
expansive treachery (territory?)          climax         climax         cum for me (again, again, again)

drunk like a cigarette in a cream room with no fan on
then, on the balcony, as a trophy
words like liquor 
ears to hear everything
except —



"My healer, my country 
has come to me. Here, to row and plow,
define my works within this border
and ascend." 



My ambition
as bitter and metallic as the word
will not be less woman
than I was made.

Not a canvas or muse, but a map,
Not a vessel to sail save the sea,
And as unrelenting as the sky.



One chance to grasp that which elevates
and won't come down         

even for altitude sickness 



(I prayed the Dostoyevsky scholar would overcome his insurmountables, and then I walked away.)