All day a tempest of Asian lady beetles. They overtake the town by dark.

In the mirror, I am wishing my name into the sun. I am trying on

different gods : colors broken between fingers.

My mother says my name like a dream, that I should want to smell small and luxurious.

You can tell a ladybug from a lady beetle by the sharpness

of their beaks : the colors broken between their legs.

Do blackholes litter their backsides?

Are they white-berry cheeked and ruptured with baby teeth?

I open a window. The dark overtaking me like a red bodycon dress.

It’s all so religious, the way I was born, the way I will leave.

I must follow the women into the spaces between one stoplight and the next.

I am losing and god, I am down to two, my body and its lack of church.

My mother splits open the side of a bug : little red second of rain. 

Little girlish blur of bravery. For her, every dream is about a dressing room.

So I snap the neck of her gospel and stake my life repenting for the velvet moons.

Every Asian lady beetle is more aggressive, more invasive than her Western counterpart.

What makes a god a good fit? Any good daughter pretending she is a good saint.

Any daughter who draws her body out of that dress, revealing the aim of her beak,

the prayerless beads of her eyes, must not be caught questioning

this spectacle of skirtless women, why yes,

when did the country on the horizon materialize all for me?

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