My Ancestor’s Daughter

Foreign gods, foreign lands,

ancient creatures, ancient men,

alien palms, alien eyes — spread out, melted:

a knob of butter pools on the kitchen counter.

The ghost of my grandmother’s grandmother

gathers, peels, smothers, bends —

a whole life pressed between foreign bodies;

makes her bed in the pigpen.

Would love be so kind

as to kiss that damned, haunted thing?

Eyes bulging, shark teeth gleaming,

crawling by my bedside.

Her shackles rasped for centuries;

her chains scrape my cheeks.

Better to drag me to the nether coven with her

than to ever let me be free.

If she survived

by kissing soiled feet, anointed first in chains,

do I have the right to pry the bedrock —

the very prison that once crowned her

most beautiful wretch,

most beloved concubine?

I love you,

but I can’t ever be you.

To save us, I’ll have to let this bloodline die.

So I pry. The bedrock sheds like old skin, 

revealing — beneath — a tender pulse:

my grandmother’s, then mine (keeps time).

I unravel a single thread from your skein,

and with my hands weave a lute —

we learn to hum our mother tongue.