When one graduates from a MFA program, one can be lucky enough to receive a Becca Cento:
Let my blood /call me a stranger, find new ways to be.
Mother daughter girlfriend wife woman poet
wopoet
daughpoet
girlpoet
friendpoet
wifepoet
mothpoet
terpoet
erpoet
poet’s poet
friend
Here is what we say to collapsed breath, crushed
by the power of crystalline words:
Speak, O violet-winged goddess of truth!
But remember
…the devil has a green coat and red horns
and she is in the details, oh the details /
Mary Mallon Victorian flora wandering wombs Van Gogh’s correspondence
May bloodletting be transposed and my cistern hold - new wine, renewed wine
speaking cantations, found in treasures old.
Bright hair
Courageous eyes
Strong voice
Amidst the cries
Teacher, advocate
Mother with a master’s degree
SHE is the chicken I want to be!
– it’s all in here,
every pin prick tourniquet, every nightmare,
every hormonal swell, she says;
you know how it is. No matter what I say –
this song is sweet, it is sweet, the heart dies of this sweetness.
Your alone-ness,
woman-ness,
mother-ness,
poet-
yearning-ness live there, in your songs, in the tiny towns and aching roads
of your kneelings. Your poems, a constant state of win. Sing
these wins —these tributaries are unchartered swells!