winter mangos 

i don't want a mango the size 
of the sky. i want your hands & a spoon.
i want a country without a country.
to walk the mountains back to a river.
i do not want a mailbox. i want a street
where i am unafraid of my neighbors.
where the chickens return with beaks
stained with raspberry juice. once in the middle
of a frigid break, we ate mangos at the kitchen
counter. those too were not our sweetness. 
how to reckon with the grief inside of joy
inside of grief inside of violence inside of
our little cake slice house by the creek. 
licked our fingers. the heat right behind
someone else's door. i was born an
a dearth of satiation. i talk to sugar
& it too quakes at the emptiness it witnesses.
teeth made of cellar doors. the windows 
thinning in the summer. i slept in the basement.
the ants begged, "can this be our home again?"
damp fires. orange in the sink. from your hands.
i do not want a billboard. who told us 
we could sell the sky? i imagine the pairing knife.
the same one we used to score the mango
into cubes. cut flesh away from pit. that knife
taken to the legs of a great sign until it too
gushed some kind of nectar. all my wounds are
dear to me. sometimes siblings. sometimes my face. 
the supermarket glows on the horizon. 
we drive there in the dying car full of all our
elsewhere junk. i do not want a handful 
of grapes. i want that river to wash me.
to grow as a huckleberry. flesh in
a moonless dark.