The low hum of disease knit itself into my shoulders

before my tongue could form the word foreign

or understand a baseline separable from pain.

god is not sympathetic to a broken body,

rinses his hands of their redness

& reminds that this, too, is perfection.

He sends me visions of The Worst Which May Come,

accepts payment for his gift

in the form of preemptive suffering.

Working-class sensibility equates the nervous ache

with moral incompetence, a familiar guilt

indefatigable in my breed.

I will work harder we both decide,

to the satisfaction of Disease.

Sweating in the back of a rented SUV,

too young to be sick like this, eyes caked

in glitter & Vaseline, Aunt Lynne says angel

& I hear anger, a clotting of the ears

that Tio Javier calls selective hearing.

I die off in bits as a man with no body

tells of a forest of poets, arms linked & set ablaze

like a chain of paper dolls.

I imagine their ties as black snakes,

promise not to lose myself amongst all this maleness,

these multitudes of god wanting me to do the dishes,

wanting me to brush my hair.

The men burn & leave behind the poems;

only the poems are divine.

god says this isn’t real

& yes, it is

in contradiction of himself.

Strapped to the bed, I am both a witch

& the daughter possessed no longer,

burning under the glare of a dozen bulbless faces.

They shake their heads, tired of my bullshit.

Why did you let yourself become a victim? Why

did you ask for this?