Every god is an auntie. What they say
about me I hoped they’d hear
as I pray-wept at the edge of my bed.
I haven’t the grapes to pursue
my birthright. Wasn’t born right.

Shame is the first flight we blame
Pandora for because someone
had to have it. Here’s a secret:
I did not ask for a father as much
as I was asked where mine was.

There is a certain wreck of reef
and weathered wood at the site
where one is aroused by older men
before one meets their old man.
I told the gods I was born wrong

and they kept drawing open
the days. The men keep landing
and my mother is a pyramid:
she leans away from each at once:
she stunts her form from hips

to sagittal suture, erodes into
a cone, lengthens her cigarettes,
stitches them with embers: this
is what I know about men
as we know them, and nothing

about womanhood have I earned.
My name means “a far fight” or
“a long shot” and a vignette of suitors
is eager to challenge either
when the wine in their eyes arcs me

like a bow. I quake in the stable
of my softhood. On the skirt
of a war I’m as cute as a brief affair
featuring lightning. I collect
a pouchful of teeth for the oracle

who tells me the porn is a crutch.
I tell her I dream of the harbor because
I’m Black. She ends the trance.
I don’t blame my father. I do.
All men let me hurt me. I let them.

Some say this ass is theirs. I let them
steep themselves stupid in me
and think—as this island thinks
of the sea, as the sea of my father—
that they make a thing what it is.