Rats

A team in a lab trained rats to be terrified         of the smell of cherry blossom,which took electric shocks and patience.

It worked so well that when they bred the rats         and piped a slight cherry scentinto the babies' cage, each new generation

trampled one another in panic. A successful         corruption in the code. I have feltsomething like this, my own ribosomes

spliced for two hundred years with fear         and obedience, a reverencethat I now struggle to leave

burning behind me like a field,         and when I finally gave in to the vowa man asked me to make, the weight

of saying yes pressed down on my throat         until it closed. In dreamsmy pioneer mothers turn me from side to side

to assess my teeth and measure my hem.         They followed a prophetover the plains until their shoes wore

through, killing as they went         and still calling themselves godly.Now that I am making a covenant

worth twelve hundred miles         of shallow graves and waist-highprairie grass, all my rag-wrapped ghosts

rise up from the banks of the North Platte         and the Sweetwaterto offer best wishes, to tell me

that heaven is mine again.         But this ring I've agreed tois a bullying little prince. It yanks out

my hair. Its pronged cathedral clogs         with bread doughwhen I punch down the dome

for a second resurrection. It slyly         etches its likeness in granite and glassand I have never been careful

with my hands. I can't stop clawing         at its endless disaster,the flesh underneath growing welted

and raw. From the kitchen window I can see         our twin cherry trees,their branches just beginning to flower.