jacklyn janeksela | carpenter: the female body | Special Feature: Moms Respond |Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Describing my daughter can be done in two words — loves life. She has been a blessing since the day she was born. As a little girl, she loved when I read to her; as an adult, she continues her love for books by writing her own. Her gift in this life is expressing herself. Readers feel and visualize what she writes. From childhood to adulthood, she has enjoyed life's adventurous without abandon. Living through my daughter's eyes is waking each morning to see what the day and this life will unfold for her.

Also by jacklyn janeksela: Two Poems you realize adults know nothing about girls when they ask you extra dumb questions Two Poems

Special Feature: Moms Respond

jacklyn janeksela

carpenter: the female body

build a house from milk, milk given, not extracted, do not take milk without permission, spoiled milk builds no house worth living in, use milk from a mother's breast who bore any beast or speck, that old patriarchy nonsense of casting out milk from a breast that bore a daughter dies today, do not vessel daughter soil, do not put out daughter flame, mother's milk from a son seed rests just as heavy as any other gender, milk from a body that built another body, all milk is equal, all milk is valid, build in slow motion, build without curding the fat, build through asking, not sucking from the periphery, that Ponzi scheme will not fortify these walls, consumption of this milk is a moral act, a political act, pinch quietly the devil's teat rustle the moon feathers of heka, whoa, Isis and Iyami Aje pinch quietly, like no one and everyone is watching, trickle into eyes that are not mine alone, Hathor cures Horace the thumb print of our mothers, hex a stone into birth visible the structure rises, build until it hurts a back, breaks a country, feeds a people, milk the sheath from the body, worm milk the cell from the blood spill, warm inside, the milk house we rest, lick the walls, paste down protection, lick the walls like you build with saliva and semen

build a house with milk, first food, antibody pathogens, the drink of the un-

dead, swallow salvation, grow wide, thick, sturdy, cow divinity, build upwards, dig until Tiet, finger all the demi-gods with bones the color of porcelain, milk fanged they gorge, they wean a house built with milk survives, pours into and away from, serpents itself a new tongue and tail, bites

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