Judith Skillman
From Your Own Filthy Mouth
Come curses, cries of the medievalist’s
rack stuck up your spine, waiting to pull
you into another form. Grandmother?
Daughter? Girl who had the knife flashed at her
in hallways of the first interracial school?
You hear a fish spit into a toilet,
see the adze in the mirror hung over
a row of off white porcelain sinks. You
turn to let out a belch from inside the whale,
you weep against the walls
of an obsidian belly
where once a tiny maggot bred
from sperm and egg performed meiosis.
Sway on a stalk, usher in another
smooth-skinned creature for whom
you’ll perform the rites of spring, old mother f’er.
Judith Skillman is the author of Came Home to Winter (Deerbrook Editions, 2019) and 15 other poetry collections. She has received grants from Artist Trust & Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Cimarron Review, Zyzzyva, We Refugees, and elsewhere. Visit judithskillman.com.
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