There’s however it is you call,
& there’s whatever it is
you’re calling to.

July, I sew
my own dress
from calico & lace.

August, they take it
off me in the Colony,
trade it in

for standard-issue
Virginia cotton.
Not much room

for my body in the
heavy slip; maybe
that’s the idea.

For awhile the abandoning
was rare & then it was not
& would never be again.

Imagine you are
an animal in your
own throat.

The dormitory has a pitched
dark roof & a high porch.
We are not allowed outside.

Instead, we go to the window & make
a game of racing dogwood blossoms
knocked down by the wind.

Choose your flower as
it falls & see whose
is the first to hit the clay.

I beat the crippled girl every day
for a week. The trick is to pick
the smaller petals.
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.

Lay out on the pine floor:
rattle your own bones back
to the center of the world.

In the beds, the smell
of kerosene & lye.
The girls wake themselves

one after another:
spasm, whimper, whine.
Outside: cicadas.

In the distance: the bighouse lights.
Another truck comes loud up the road
bearing another girl.

There is whatever it is
you’re calling to. There is
however it is you call.