MAIDEN NAMES

Actually, I think I should be a mother because my mother  
was a mother. She raised me to be unlike her.  

When my mother was forced to leave the nest, 
she flew west and built her own and let us stay  
as long as we wanted. I’m her little chick.  

My mother would still love me if I wasn’t a girl. I know 
because I asked again and again:  

if I was a worm,  
if I was a part-time boy, if I quit  
a dead-end job, 

and each time my mother as a mother gave me new life,  
made possible my impossible dreams,  

my mother made real,  

my mother in a dream once pecked  
my eyes out. I don’t remember a life before  
my fear of birds or my fear of her.  

My mother, who didn’t teach me how to dice  
an onion or how to hoodwink a traitor, that mother  

who asks me now if I’ll ever get married,
ever have children. I want to do it to get that mother

off my back, to prove to the person who believed  
I could do anything,  

that I can do anything, 
make anything, create new life out of old body,  
and then I can do the thing mothers everywhere  

try and fail,  

I can let that new life live  
however it wants.