wild yeast

we take our webbed feet 
& gill dresses to the heavy forest.
once my mom told me 
that she was never a child. i believe her.
instead, she was a star fruit 
& a bottle of blood. we get the car
to start again after holding a seance.
all we need is enough monsters 
to make a loaf of bread. we'll live there
all winter feeding each other catacombs.
i would steal the dough as it rose.
pinching the blubber of the lovely whale.
we are in the shower & the yeast
is all around us. yeast in the wood
& yeast in the marrow. i ask you,
"what kind of whale do you think i am?"
you joke, "sperm" & then agree with me
that i am a beluga. dough chariot. 
soft stomachs. resting my head
on my stolen cloud. the yeast talk
about an army of god. i tell them 
we are not that kind of people. we are
the spore shakers & the wood splitters.
i have never wanted 
to be holy. instead i have craved
the brief warmth of fresh bread. 
bleeding steam. i found my mother once
as a girl in the backyard. i braided her hair
just like she would one day try to braid mine.
she was covered with bugs. 
good bugs & useless bugs. the oven 
was growing. soon it would be the size
of a house. i made beds for every yeast
in the hopes that they would stay.
we banged pots & pans. we cried, 
"wake up." a staircase that leads 
only to an unused picture frame.
there is not enough time. we have 
to eat the bread. we have to call 
the milkmen. the yeast say, 
"better than nothing" & they could be
talking about their body as a feast
or they could be talking about
the family stories i have 
about how to survive.