Songs of the Scorpion

To My Children

Eight legs on the ground, 

                   I carry you on my back—

tiny lobsters that swim through desert air. 

When did we decide to leave the sea? When

could we breathe? 

                           The wind is my only lover 

now that your father is gone. And I feel so close to the earth, 

the ground, so close, 

                           so close to the wind.

                                                 How we danced the night we made you, 

                       he moved me around under a tree, pushed

with his pincers, his mouth

                                            —with his tail he came for my body. 

                  Had he always been prey? 

When it was over, I pierced him twice

              no—three times,

assessed his body, considered it possible food. 

                                       I had no appetite for his heart.

Let him remain, I said to the wind. 

                          Let him be an incremental deflation,

               a slow flattening against the horizon. 

Let him come so close to the earth 

                                 there is no longer difference between them. 

Will I too assimilate—make of this body the

                      burial-in-waiting it has always been?

                We are one step away from being crushed

    to dust, 

           from rolling away with the wind.  

                                            Stay on my back, little ones. 

                      I will try to keep my mouth 

from being a monster.

*

Scorpius

The sky will make itself known to my body
—find me with its light.
I collect the moon, 

turn it to blue, to green—
my entire torso an eye,
watching us.

Do my limbs glow 
so bright I must stow 
away in the shadows?

In my chest, 
even the stars are dying
—my sorrow a constellation 
as I birth this skin.

The Palms

With fronds like cassette tape, 
waving in the unthinkable sun. 

With trunk hair bristled 
in anticipation. They flash

and breathe, shimmer
and glint for the wind. 

Will it slow? Restrain? 
Will it lick—whip? 

The palms also surveil 
me—I too have a bark,

one my interior continues
to outpace. Will I always test 

the limits of my shelter?
How many times will the 

blood course to my back,
will I shake & beat—

legs like terrible drums?
How many times will I crack

—slither out into the mouth of
the untold desert & feel 

its desolate tongue?
How many times will I hear 

the wind—rustling,
singing to me—you cannot shed 

without breaking, before I stop,
before I no longer choose to break?