It Comes from Having a Body

 

 

When I was a child I stuttered with the violence

of one thousand wings— the flock in my mouth

could not escape.

 

God says be BUZZARD! Be a new baby born

with teeth— be a curl or a tide or a half-girl half-bird—

be transformed— be Harpy.

 

I drove my mother’s forever postpartum— sorry was the hardest

to sputter— the savage wings— the tongue ticks

flapped and fought but one day God

 

said SUN— and God said good morning, child— and I said

hard T Tuesday. The first time I did not stutter, mother held me

for one thousand seconds— the birds

 

flew from my mouth cave like wood smoke and I did not know

that I had almost killed her— a body will wait

for the very last moment to act.

 

Sometimes God says YAHTZEE and I know this means

someone has won but someone has lost too— A holy man

is a gambling man, and that God of ours,

 

he takes bets after all. Once a mother’s baby drowned at home,

and God said, hello— the baby knew the wet of something—

the sink of the same— he sank like the sun

 

— an orb of stutter— an entire candied peach. A baby body

can be a poem too— can talk to God and want truth

or deep water all the same.

 

Did you hear the news— my soaked soma cannot stop stammering—

it will not pull a fluid stroke for the life of it— it will not slow

enough to tally. This body is searching everywhere

 

wet for love and real. God says BUOY for it. Body says how

so— God says flap to float and Body says brilliant.

It comes from having a shape

 

that won’t rest for anything but soothe and flare

when God is so near— that has to make all the art

and read all the words and love

 

all the men in an effort to know what God wants from

a body— what God wants from offering

a moment of flood or wings.

 

What God wants from a stammer poem by any woman

with a story— from a body begging for last call—

from a current pulling down and out.

 

 

God says kiss me— a body says what’s at stake.