Suck down the poison of many men did I endure
when winter watches went too long in the tooth.
To live among my people meant giving up
on anything kind. I couldn’t, you see, at twenty,
give my heart to a man, and didn’t. My sister blood
my sister self and I against the tide. Fistfuls of standards,
gold, silver, the stamp of a pretty boy’s words even,
nothing did they hold in brief repose. We ate fire
and hate of whisky nights with our father, because
otherwise he would have killed us. You see,
those who stay out past their prime lose all hope.
They cannot learn another trade that allows such vice.
Hair coiling with gull lice. Hands rough and hard
as a sturgeon’s gill maw, as spiny too. We turned love
inside out when we lay with those steam-tramp men.
Turning it back out we had each other, sister heart,
my second mother’s child, my shell collector, my bird
song. Starting with the weighing of our bushels,
she could sing easy enough for the man in charge
to look beyond my fingers. This and the dozens game
of naming each other fantasies to set the taverns a light.
But we never stayed the night, it was back into the marsh,
on our skiff, with our stolen wine, a pouch of honest money,
not to mention beef and cheese, our eyes full with the tack
and cutter of more stationed men, more passioned women,
a long week’s worth of other problems to leave behind.
