mother is born from “a thick substance
concreting in liquors,” like the whiskey
they tell you to rub on new gums or the red wine
my mother told me would help his forming heart
grow stronger, Look how resilient you turned out, she says,
not knowing she too comes from “lees” or “scum” or “waste
of skin,” probably from Middle Dutch modder
“filth and dregs,” what’s left of us after
we’ve been named, but also see mud, found in many
words denoting “wet” or “dirty” or “damp” or “moist”
and other women tell you how they hate
the sound of it, without explaining why, that word
between the thighs, how they would rather come
from Old Irish muad for “cloud,” would rather look up
in wonder, counting cows or crows or clowns, imagining
their bodies too can change back just as easily, can shift
from solid into air then back to water, without coming
from the Polish mul “slime,” the Sanskrit mutra- “urine”
other women don’t tell you is okay to talk about and be and let
release without becoming “excrement,” without relief being
related to the German Schmutz “dirt,” but your son’s hands
are full of it, the scum and dregs and filth, the earth he shovels
in his mouth, devouring the world both of you come from,
moving from mud to mouth to you so easily, you realize
that being named for the “lowest or worst of anything,”
in his hands, is as close as you can get to flying.