Psalm for Single Mothers

Every client I take to bed makes a mother of me eventually 
teenage madonna and child with no clue how to care  
for grown men suckling at milkless breasts  
what it is about my androgyne slimness / clit too large / ovaries on the outside  
aching to make life from an ersatz womb (can they smell her?) 
every john who’s rich in money is a pauper in tenderness & touch 
so why do I still struggle to make ends meet when  
no matter how hard mommy spanks them/they always beg for more 

Listen, I learned from the best  
made a saint of my mother  
who had a master’s degree & taught me to be too proud  
to collect unemployment & too sad to leave the dance floor 
til morning turned the new boyfriend into a pumpkin & her sobs shook  
the paper-thin drywall on finding the pantry as empty as our stomachs  
& the electricity went out anyway 

I ask the morning star why god has to be such a cunt 
why teen mom is just another word for  
oldest girl in the orphanage  
& why he made me wish for a body that could make life  
& why he thought an army of orphans would console my unbloodied sex 

I, girl surrounded by sharp objects for the things  
I’m too weak to  o  p  e  n / if I cut you  
an entrance would you notice the struggle  
to ache alive a fertile cradle into my sex?  
Listen, if there’s one thing the army taught me it’s  
you go to war with the body you have not the body you might want  
or wish to have at a later time 
but like so many single mothers mowing the lawn while daddy’s away 
my petals never open no matter how many bayonets I bury in my skin 

If you ever want soldier sons, a piece of advice:  
raise a small, warm-blooded thing  
with all your love & a lifespan of one or two years 
so when they die, you will mourn them longer than they had ever lived 
I’m doing you a favor / these sons you send to battle 
will never call / drink too much & leave their toys around the house  
round in the chamber just in case their memories overrun the gates 
& the last evac out is what soldiers’ mothers fear most  

I’m sick of telling war stories because people don’t listen  
so to paraphrase: my brother lost himself in Kandahar  
to an army of fathers he thought could give him  
a better home than the one I made for him 
in summary: these days, when I listen  
to him speak his voice becomes the bedroom we shared as children 
& just as vacant & distant & irretrievable 

My sister is a veteran of the wars fought in our living room  
PTSD from daddy’s night raids littering 
trails of civilian casualties across the kitchen floor 
I wonder if she believes me when I say I walk the streets alone at night  
as exposure therapy but never tell her  
I’m seeking penance in a man with daddy’s hands 
to punish me for every night I fled father and left her defenseless 

I wish my maternal instincts ended with my siblings’ silence 
I made a rule to give every ending I wrote a small measure of grace 
a token of love to give my grieving lines because everyone dies 
& at least I’ll have left a fragment of me 
yet I falter; I wish I had faith that nothing ever ends 
& nothing ever dies but how I could live with such fetters? 

In the photo of bà nội on my altar she does not smile  
saint resting bitch face: I pray this body of spiro this blood of estradiol 
hail grandma serving cunt make me in your scowling image 
so at least I’ll know I’m just as beautiful 
& I wonder how someone so beautiful could’ve made a son so ugly 
& how someone so ugly could’ve made a woman who makes herself  
the sort of mother who knows what sons who lose their mothers 
do to daughters who look just like them 

If I was my father’s mother I’d see  
how he just wanted to make someone else feel  
the way he felt / April 1975 / sixteen on a distant shore  
liberation razing all he loved 
a strange new home a world without: daily beatings  
/ sons returning to mothers draped in the flag  
/ & mothers who die too soon 
I’ll see how he failed at everything he did anyway 

& remember when I hated the girl on the bus  
in the floral dress her stubble stood proud 
her tracheal bulge rasping from too much laughter— 
how she just wanted to make someone else feel  
desire intense enough to be mistaken for hate 
& make a girl who forced a boy onto herself 
be a mother to / her son / her daughter / herself 

If my mother was right; & there will be no one to care for you 
when I’m gone & if I’m anything like her 
I’ll sew gold into the seams of your clothes & 
wait among the torchflies & I’ll rub your back  
while we watch for the boat that spirits you away  
to a new country where I’ll teach you  
to see the illusion of plenty on store shelves &  
to never talk to the police & how home feels  
just like a half-remembered song played on an untuned string 

I’ll always have my boy / my girl / you children inside me 
I’ll go gray worrying whether my fear of  
coups by motherless juntas has made me 
forget to teach you how to find your joy outside me 
I’ll still buy my girl her chibi dolls & animal stuffies  
& all manner of sweet things long after you’ve outgrown them 
how I’ll still remind my boy he can have dolls & wear pink & 
kiss boys if he wants / long after you’ve learned to love them 

& if I love these children I can never carry nor birth  
I can love every student & john & friend & mother & sibling  
& enemy & father / & make this motherless mass 
my dark-haired mistress for blessed art thou among women   
who takes my prayer-clasped hands her lips  
promise to break the beads chaining child to cross 
Listen carefully when her words abolish  
worship for fathers who are never there 
and the paradise promised that will never come