prepare yourself
for entry
prime yourself to be stripped
like something ripe
and swaddled in soft velvet
never mind how the skin feels
peeling
the body will yield
remember you are claimed for
this plucking
open yourself
make way for whatever may bloom
you are ground
you are soil
you are earth
that makes men’s hands
black from hard work
you are fostered
by roots/fortified by bone
and the filth of dying
never mind the blood
left behind
yield to me/something new
prepare yourself for planting
take what you are given and shit
for me a diamond/splinter
yourself into a head of white petals/i want to see
the flowers crowning
i want to see/your lips
splayed like an orchid’s skull
give me something
to admire/give me something
i can name/after
the way/a body
splits/like the edges
of a maple leaf rotting/give me something
my love/can suture
give me some
thing i can claim
brittny ray crowell is a native of Texarkana, Texas. She is the recipient of a Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and The Lucy Terry Prince Prize, judged by Major Jackson. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Frontier, The West Review, Mount Island, Aunt Chloe, Copper Nickel, The Journal, and the anthology Black Lives Have Always Mattered. She is a teaching assistant and PhD candidate in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston and a poetry editor for Gulf Coast.
