Iele

Have you ever met girls made of antler velvet?
They are snow, they are yellowing
broth, hot throats strained by cold air.
Laughter soaked through boiled bones all
mountain sounds with joints that never thaw.

These girls are flowers drying on the windowsill,
sliced open bellies hanging in a small house soaked in salt.
The calcium white of dowry lace, the strength of
blankets locked inside a wooden box.

When you press your face into her hair you smell smoke,
animals skinned for drum membranes, a rooster spasming
above the the slosh of blood in the bowl and your grandmother
drawing a small knife across the crumpled neck with leather palms.
You watch, containing your breath between the gaps in the fence.

I have seen girls made of beast hours.
Under nights that half-whimper out in blued
sputters of campfire, boney fingers pull the furs closer.
Somewhere, there are teeth snapping at the church door

You are supposed to name your daughters after saints
but these are women born with rifles tied to their spines.
Snow-clots between the toes, these girls are a hound pack
of fever, wombed in the stories of ancient things, mouths so
argent-heavy lapping at your eyes like sparks from striked iron.

You are the beast she would like to cut open, to
crawl inside and occupy the shelter of your organs.
In my dreams, Winter is a hungry sister.
Jaws slick as honey, fastened around the kiss of your throat.