Mick Powell’s poem, “u be a fang // i be a body,” will be published in Apogee Journal Issue 09. 

i am thinking of fire forgiveness my mother (and fire)

Ma, didn’t you want / to know how / i mantra’d
my bullied mouth into water sound? how

(i got)

atlantic / atlantis / disappeared the raw red
and became a city of calendar? how i

(haunted)

the ghosts & the gods / turned my body / black
tourmaline? thumbed into the aloe plant

(and)

ate its nectar / to soften between my legs / to bury myself
in a casket of peach skin? didn’t you

(want)

to know how / i learned to braid hair / in the dark
or how i crawled open my jaw? how i imagined sage

(burning)

between my teeth / imagined / all the earth’s
smoke ashing me into small? my soft spot

(or)

how i sabotaged / it / when it became
turquoised and rib-boned? brimmed with violent

(apology)

Ma, didn’t you want / to know how / i ripped
all of the baby teeth from myself that night?

(i made him)

a raw red place / to put himself / instead of
down there, where all it did was

(flame)