My Body Lives All Over America

My body lives all over America. It can go on without its appendages. I am not contaminated. Feel the comfort of corrugated aluminum, alluvial sometimes. Whisper nothing the soil can't carry. Hold a match to me and I glow iridescence. Water pools at the base of my torso. I smolder, become smoky.

My mother has lost sight of me. I have drowned in seventy percent of me.

My home grazes Appalachia. My reflection keeps silent. Mothers me. Teaches me the meaning of mirage. I find comfort at the bottom of things, curl my toes under like claws, hide rainbows in
my arches.

My mother was a boat. She talked to mountains when it rained, collected tears in wooden buckets, transformed them into petals, a thousand shed fingerprints. She clawed at my sundress CRIED GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINS. She went fishing with Jesus.

The mountain is crying and collecting my fingerprints.

Mom doesn't know how to shorten the distance. Between us is a desert. An iridescent oil slick. We go on. Go on, drink it. Touch me and touch the distance. I hold a wooden crucifix. Only Jesus understands my fingerprints.

My pancreas blooms inside a wooden bucket. The clouds conceal my fingertips. Jesus desires no more appendages. A thousand blooming fingerprints. Death doesn't know the name for this.

My mother was a mountain. Her chest as flat as Kansas. She opens her mouth and reeks of iridescence. Harvest the oil slick at the base of her torso. Hold a match and she disintegrates.

Clouds spread out across the aluminum. Jesus is in my mother festering. My pancreas is birthing a forest. Who clear cut my appendages? This bucket of contaminated fingertips.

My mother goes on without her appendages. She roves around the forest topless.

The shortest distance between her and I is an oil slick. I look at her and see my reflection in the shape of Jesus. Go tell it to her fingerprints. Her ribcage of corrugated aluminum. Appalachia doesn't need more appendages.

The mountains tell me I am combustible. My knees are aluminum. My breasts have never been appendages. The clouds appear closer than Jesus. The shorter the distance, the more I am corrugated. I am closer now to death than I am to my mother.

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