If Benyamin the Younger Sister

 
When I turn brundlefly I’m afraid my brothers
      will blow off my head
 
          perhaps they need
               insect politics
                       not knowing adam
                           from marmalade
 
          Perhaps somewhere in a cave
          in an unmarked grave
          precious my precious
          Mother’s last word
          my real name
          slept in
          no filter
          break
          the internet don’t come for me brothers
          unless I hit send
 
                Make it rain
                          shameless
                               are insects
                                    ever gone
                                         with the wind
     Are insects ever
     between brothers
     breaking bread
     go batshit
     meth do they ever get rich
     or die
     trying in insect coups seek
     asylum
     pixie stix
     carcass no you can’t sit
 
     with us you’re missing a leg
          antennae
                most of your head
                     your right hand
 
                          am I the first
                          last words
                          mother left
                          if I turn brundlefly
                          what of this never
                          name
                          corrosive enzyme
                          caught beneath a silver cup
                          mix it in
                          with your honey and milk
                          brothers I’ll suckle
                          you dry
                          while mother’s fasting
                          and I promise
                          nothing will you
                          stay then
                          when I turn brundlefly
                          when illness
                          is a form of possession
                          and all children
                          the original debt
                          a death to be
                          larger than desire
 
 
 

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a CantoMundo Fellow. She was a Rackham Merit Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a Horace Goldsmith Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013), a contributor to The Conversant, and an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, Hunger Mountain, among others. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review blog. Find her at 7TrainLove.org