White King by Callie Deming; for more information, visit
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AteleirCDeming

Becoming the Fawn White and What It Meant

 by Rachel Richards

Build an altar:
cut off two of your finger nails
the wet spot on the counter and
blood like:
chocolate croissants, like blooming tomatoes turned green
then pink
then red

I am made of bend and want
          my church the roof of your mouth
               my church made of teeth and lace
cathedral ceiling vaulted ceiling sing my name
: sing me a white hart, 

(sugar and conviction) you, my sweet September noon

you pull your hand out of me red
: alabaster
blood sorghum-syruping your mouth.
This is a body becoming a body.

Holy is the bed under these white vaulted ceilings
cherry pit mouthed
shy spit and red

tell me about your Daddy’s god, and does he believe you a boy?
say oil, say naked, say yolk, home, affect
ghost

the bloodstain run through the sheets into your homestay family’s mattress
how you and crushed aspirin worked to make it disappear
: mud and sharp
and what this means. 

a clam shell breaking the surface of the Pamet’s flat mud:
cut foot and that salt brine
my grandmother wraps it in a brown washcloth,
lays me on the bathroom’s white tiled floor
: three oranges, mud, an abalone’s broken back, the mango gone too soft in it’s ripe
hot, honey, water,
milk and truth
: your face under the bathwater blowing bubbles against my thigh

About Rachel Richards

Rachel is a queer poet and teacher living in Truro, Massachusetts. Their work has recently appeared in Gallery 1381 and on their partner’s wall.