Nomenclature

Species:

   her hair grows into a flag and how long it flutters   depends on whether it burns or not.

  there is huge turret on her scalp,  I wrapped my fingers around the trigger.

   my mother and I share the stories  of women whose hair we’ve braided

  but are no longer here to join in the rituals  that make salt of our bodies, when everywhere was cold.

Genus:

   the blood that flows in our veins surged   from a fountain that is also a confluence for strangers.

  I inherited a pouch made of snake skin,  and that alone makes me feel like a dinosaur.

   it could be hard to convince anyone of the miles  I dug into the ground to keep my tongue wet.

   the fossils of my finger nails should have been enough  that extinction begins with a single death and not a plague.

Family:

  a group of women seated in circles could be mistaken for coven,   and this too is how we lose our names.

  our lineage was dotted with the tattoos of a candle tradition  to show how hospitable we are, though our scars never heal.

  I was shown love, when asked to dance in the rain—even though  I’m dying of hypothermia; I am another form of civilization.

  the greatest love I had, growing up in this house  was to be thrown into the wild, to see how long it’ll take to return.

Order:

  I have a compound eye, so I got named after my grandmother,   and she after her grandmother.

  this house stays empty until we find another tenant   that won’t blame my cat for my cough.

   on the blue walls are 3D signs of Hamsa   to keep the house safe from anything that flies.

Class:

  my body is a room packed with the rays of memories   and the void is filled to the brim with silent prayers.

  it all began as grub; until it could grow wings to fly out the window,   flight is a form of song that escapes the reeds in my femur.

  I hear vibrations from the mountain, and the sky outside is   now the color of my eyes when I’m pregnant with rage.

Phylum:

  there is an historical language of how I got this dark skin,  it has nothing to do with how I could get shot dancing on my lawn, at night.

  the first law here states that I may be destroyed,   and could be made into shapes of aloe vera growing in a tin of sand.

  because mortality can also mean emptiness, when my body floats,  all that surrounds it swells in the water it loses to the heat.

  incantations are a form of prayers, when slurred slowly   or when you look at the sky with so much empathy.

Kingdom:

  this space is too empty to be filled with a mourning song.   the echoes are the first signs

  that in my hair is a cage  that housed fireflies that bleeped to remind me of home.

  I hear my own voice intermittently when I sleep,  I dreamed that I float [face up] inside the well in the backyard.

  it's 1929, and I’m in the same cell with the Aba women,  the scars on their cheeks are the language of rebellion against patriarchy.

Domain:

  here, we so much believe in miracles,   I sight new moon from the bowl of water.

  the second law of nomenclature states  that I could lose my name at age twelve or younger.

  when the circle of girls in the room   found our voices to sing out our pains,

  we were mistaken for factory of babies. heat consumes our body  and we lose all the water we had, that kept us from burning.

Life:

  we lived in a cell—I mean the smallest form of life.  we grew through the web until we lost our names.

  revolution is how we get to lose  all we inherited from all our dead.

  I tell my neighbor of how so much—the angels hate garlic.  I hanged my nudes on her walls, but she died three days later—in her sleep...