Pubic hairs float up the strata of my bath and I remember being confident
I was going to be a good mother of many children
When a boyfriend said, “I want a big, loud family,” I lied and said, “Same”
A friend said to me once, “I’m good at sex, that doesn’t mean
I should be a prostitute,” and I began reconsidering a lot of things: cows,
mostly, but also tax evasion
A child in my charge wrapped my hair around her fists like boxing gauze;
I let her—
This was maternal as hell
If I shaved my head, you’d see that baby’s grip burned among the stubble like a brand
Don’t question the farm where you were born, why it was there,
why it belonged to an oral surgeon
Every MD in AL owns farmland for tax write-off
purposes (buy a cow, sell a cow—keep it legit)
It helps if you can get a cheap hand
Find a young father with an infant daughter and nowhere to live
Give them rent of the property shack, kudzu lapping the sides all night
like a tide pulled up by the moon
No need to grow anything
The cows are few
and only need to survive
You won’t be the first to be disturbed by what you
find, or don’t, in a bovine’s eyes
My father climbed ladders, pitched hay down into truck beds,
and it fell unlike snow, shot up a shadow when it landed
Lately I’ve been reading a lot in the bath
about two women who are friends
Power pours from one to the next; there is only so much,
and it can only be shared, one up, one down, how simple and clean
The opposite, in my experience,
of becoming a person, which I like
in the way, back in school, I liked grinding,
which everyone but me suddenly seemed sexually comfortable enough,
one winter, to be into, mostly in hot, dark garages
I went to the parties and stood at the edge
eating stumpy little carrots
People thought I was judging, but I was just trying
to figure out how to be sexy without bringing my body into it
Parents didn’t want to know what was
happening with us, and neither, frankly, did I, but I felt I had to, watching
a boy hold a girl’s pelvis to his, swinging her limp form back and forth
offbeat in the dark; they looked like an ear of corn somebody gave up trying to shuck after peeling back one husk leaf, the leaf at the mercy of the shank
When a friend says, over the phone, “You got the life I expected to get,
and I got yours,” I think we’re appreciating irony, so I laugh
I often laugh when I’m in charge
of sharing bad news (e.g., We [ha ha] had to put our dog to sleep)
Boyfriend: Sometimes I consider driving into oncoming traffic
Me: ha ha ha ha
In the book, both friends hope and fear they are the more intelligent.
They love the same man and have daughters by the sea
We were sitting on her blue couch the day before tax day, and she said,
“My womb aches for a baby,” and, laughing, I said, “Like . . . literally?”
and she said, “Uh, yes . . .” very suspiciously, as if she’d just discovered
I might be an eel
I see them at the beach, sneakily studying each other’s stomach
when they flip a page
God bless the IUD, that little white anchor
with its little white string—three years is a long time to be upside down
eating semen
Later I’ll walk an hour to the bookstore and my boss’s kids will be there
in the back: one boy, one girl, watching me