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What the Grandmothers Say

we broke bottles electrified the abandoned

macadam with our rag-bone labor

smudgy fireflies in the humid night gathering a hundredfold

now you limn the apple seeds

spit polish your steeled tongue

you gnaw gnaw down your scattered hunger, child,

bank in lusty angles

while your hatchlings in their clotted nests uncoil wet from shell

beak a widening raw

all our rage unslaked—

from Last DaysFind more by Tamiko Beyer at the library

Copyright © 2021 Tamiko Beyer
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Published in Poems Tamiko Beyer

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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