It Was the Year of the Dog

so I removed the unthawed 

placenta from my freezer

two years too late 

and instead of burying it 

with my moon blood beneath the dogwood

as the four white women advised

I flung it far into the mouth 

of a rabid hound 

searching for scraps of bone, 

anything—my body. Violent

said the women from their hedges. 

Soil is a more spiritual choice. Shit

crusting my daughter’s flesh, and the howling

upturning everything we’ve buried—the dead

stars alight with watching: you are 

my only one

First published in Pleiades Magazine (2021). Included in Impossible Belonging (2023)