a woman steps out of the ocean & begins to die
i give birth to a fever well
seafoam sick & skin /
slick / your hair cuts my tongue
i wear the water nightdress
spit up salt harbor women
in my teeth
my red red gloves /
as you love your mother’s life
take it / as i birth another mother
from my throat she crawls hands
& slick pink baby mother
i choke & the reigns say
mother mother
gorgeous tiger take her inside
i love & it’s a library i see
spines & every book cries mother
mother & every ink between
my teeth & all the bones i eat are
mother mother blue lipped & feral
a window imagines a beautiful house
i become a box drawing outside
my portrait i am / given names
are costume bodies make note
of numbers / i imagine her
outside it’s dead inside the ceiling
begins to sink & my arms grow
weak / i hang myself a painting
of a window i see mountains & my
calves hurt / what is a woman
but a lovely peal of skylight
Kathryne David Gargano hails from the Pacific Northwest, but isn’t very good at climbing trees. She recently graduated with her MFA in Poetry from the University of Nevada – Las Vegas, and has been published in CALYX, The Fem, Indicia, and Heavy Feather Review, among others. Her work is forthcoming in The Colorado Review and Pittsburgh Poetry Review. You can find pictures of her three-legged pup on Instagram @peternelle3.
