Add that to the long list

sometimes my heart hurts so hard,
so fierce and bad and strong, 

that I could scream.

Hard fierce bad strong scream.
Hard fierce bad strong scream. 

Add it to the long list
of things I hold between my breasts
like the Sacred heart light:

like the big storm catalyst,
that movement the opposite
of apocalypse:

Nightmares in varied colors
pine needles and red dirt and
Grandma's mastectomy, 
pale as an angel's hem, and
her Mexican opal ring, and
that bike ride up the impossible
hill at the Mission,
that lynx with its bobbed tail
those illustrious whiskers,

And inhaling the liquor 
of a warm night shoulder, 

And the crack in the earth
from the earthquake, 

with all the flotsam of the farm
falling though, 

and those nights, from other lives, of worst abuse,
the kimono the color of watermelon.

The silver hammer I grabbed like a thief
and clutched in case he
tried to kill me.

Sometimes I just want to lie like a dog in the sun because I am tired

Sometimes I just wanna wail on time itself. 

And I wonder how I'm still pure as a glacier lake
given what's been taken 

and all that it takes. 

No one talks about how women are wild animals,

all incisor and ovary, 

and quaking feet and vicious instinct to love 

all hair and nail and screw.

Driven to apply some cobwebs
to that old pulsating side-wound. 

All scar and curling muscle 

and long dark tunnel 

leading somewhere

somewhere good