brood parasite

if we agree we take
possession of the things
that bear us,
if we agree
to brood is to cherish with the mind.
to brood is to try to hold a cloud in your mouth without letting
on that it’s there. the nest doesn’t belong to the hatchling as it belongs
to the eggs. if we accept a possession
is the thing you own, is the ghost that rules you.
a hatchling takes possession, empties a nest by pushing eggs
over the woven lip with its unfeathered tail.
property is a two-way street, I like to think.
my mother for example, my grief for another.
the broken eggs belong to the ground, and the ground
to the blood-streaked yolks—
an example, even, belongs to its abstract shell.
ownership is an obstacle to unletting,
sex better on a rented bed, pleasure freer overheard
by a faceless neighbor. the baby
didn’t speak my tongue but
I understood her wanting language all the same.
a cloud is the egg you hold in your mouth,
the baby the thing you can’t help
but let in. spun sugar is the cotton you consider
breathing. the egg, I cherish it with my mind.
my mind, a mouth sitting on top of a nest.
all the same, birthright is the fiction
America builds in me. meeting
my neighbors I call them siblings. singing
false, I evict them without sprouting a feather.
the joy I expected
in abetting another’s abandonment
never arrives. my country, inescapable,
escapes me. the world condenses to a word,
the candy in the sky starts to cry,
my tears sustain a thing, cherishing.
a taut relation is a two-way string—
talking into the tin can,
talking into an echo, I derail its shape.
I have forgotten the egg I came from, the one
I came for. I have forgotten
if I am bigger or smaller than my mother—
the natural order, she understands my wanting
language.
my mouth opens, cherry-stained,
I am hungrier than she can stand
to provide.