blood seed, east wind

by Abigail Chabitnoy

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Awa’uq

In Pennsylvania I dreamt a garden in the woods
waist deep the wilding bodies hollowed
husks idling fallow
no parsnip petals or fire weeding only
Fritillaria camschatcensis sweet rot, and soldier flies
where yellowing
the displaced earth
musky fruit multiplied
and in the trees black bags rapping limbs
mothers and children wind whistling
mouths exposed.

I climbed into the ribs of one of the men
a woman born to labor
into the husk of bone where wind I wept
until I was seed and each red flower
was a face I would remember.

—1784, present