Mother
BY TAYLOR PORTELA
Hawk they re-nicknamed her.
With the best eyesight out of ten siblings,
she couldn’t spot the unspoken–her OG–
Gay–was a moniker for the desire
I refused, certain cock would break the camel’s back
not my cousins fighting in the pasture, not my uncles,
drunkfagged and carnivorous outside
my closeted mind, heralding new days
with obscene calls, waking us from all the rooms
of my grandparent’s house.
My hands still sticky with self
from the sight of shirtless farmers baling hay
who treated their horses to the biggest carrots
this side of the Mississippi that, when bit,
juiced an orange Idaho only knew as fire.
The kind that dripped off M Hill on the fourth of July,
when fireworks overtook the brush. It heightened our visions
to the heavens, to little bursts of smoke
that if suspended in time would sound a singe across the sky.
Keeping her gaze on all of us, Mother Hawk
didn’t let any shit get past her, her sky view,
but I tested the accuracy of her observations
by furling in, where feathers friction into
my tell. I have wings.
