FIVE POEMS

Unlove Poem

If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say it
enough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic,

I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.
I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting,

slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really. It’s the simplest thing,
I do it in my sleep. I have invasive dreams,

after all, they infect my lover’s skull, they crank our jaws
into four slow hammers. After all, I’m made of distance

plus the beautiful things people have tried to put
inside me, they fall out the bottom. No one can kill me

with kindness. No one can reach me through the sound
of such ancestral ugly, sound of my grandmothers gagging

a half-century ago (did they?). My grandmother beatingher stomach with her fists, drinking medicine,