Brittny Ray Crowell

discernment: an heir/loom

i know this by heart     like the dead

equations of my youth i used to dial a voice

this tightrope    coiled like an extension

cord       carries me      and i follow

all the way to my grandmother

‘s home

it tells me which trees to trust      and which to leave

alone      which water is safe to drink or wade

and which water a grave was made from

everything can be water if you’re found in it face down    

like the story of a distant cousin

left drowned in a field of cotton

like the uncle swimming while standing in the air

a veil of branches and spanish moss draping

his hair    the preacher slit six, seven times

in the stomach like small spaces for coins

my grandmother’s father chasing haints

in the woods     how he died the death of a boxer

made sure all the blood they found

around him wasn’t his own

let me tell you all the things my broken body's been

a tomb

a bomb

a bloom in a vestibule for violence

a grain in the palm of my mother

i dreamed a body pristine

a cistern full of holy water

a road where a young girl

wanders unnoticed        

forgets she’s been

so far without fear

i never asked to be clover

tender hearted      hunted and plucked

let me be sprawling like the kudzu

for once      let me smother

what would take me over

lord prepare me

to be a sanctuary

a succor for love