The uterus blooms at night unseen
cells undifferentiated, curtains wild with rain.

On the county line, a sky cumbersome with child
throws down aerial spawn. A trough will not
hold more than this liquefied body can.

Do they mean the broken vessel
or endless vassalage. My contagious mother
driving to Mexico through oak & yellow esperanza

said No more. At dusk she set out suet
for the pearly mockingbird.

                        ~

Solomon in your robes, pray you
no further parables when the seas run hot.
There is scourging enough now.

~

What is the meaning of transhuman? To pass beyond.
Esperanza bells at shoulder’s height;
no soil in the galaxy tenders such fertile roots.

Daily, my mother & I tasted shame
rising as lovely nothings, falling into ourselves.
She said To be born is punishing.

What does neurotypical mean? Not to repeat
the compulsive lashings of rain, mumblings of wind.
Extraordinary, the ways to live.

Light years pass, unnoticeable.
It’s late to be remaking this bargain with futurity.

***

Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Fever and Bone (Dos Madres Press,
2021), Environments (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press, 2017.)
Alexander’s poems appear in a variety of anthologies and in journals such as The American
Journal of Poetry, The Canary, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, 
Hamilton Stone Review, One, Pangyrus, Pif, Ruminate, The Seattle Review of Books,
Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org and Third Wednesday. With
Stephen Massimilla, she is co-editor of an anthology of social justice poems, Stronger Than Fear, published in March 2022.