When I ate the butterfly, I
stalked it by the hibiscus—like a stray cat,
the wings melted to my tongue
like triangles of silk.
When my aunt caught me,
she pinched my jaws as if I were a snake,
and said,
Someday that will be someone’s wherewithal,
down in there.
My aunts—grand or otherwise, were not surprised
when on a summer day, too hot for hurricane,
I ate the white cubes
hiding under my great aunt’s chair,
mistaking her white clay for a white fudge.
The river mucus, the hill blood squished
wetly with my spit between my teeth. Maybe
this orbit of aunts, my mother there, but still
an aunt to someone, know the secret
to eating dirt, or are just that hungry.
I spy a cricket in the corner and snatch its
greenness in my jaws. It creeks one last
time before I look up from my haunches.
There is a broom stick at my funeral mound
of a belly, my aunt asks me,
Just what is so hungry
down
in
there?