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?