My first sexual feeling was in the school yard of my seventh spring when a warm breeze flew through my veil-like shirt and brushed what never developed as breasts, but the promise of them, then. 

My father was disappointed I couldn’t grow a cleavage. So he came to the reassuring conclusion that I was born in Europe the year Chernobyl exploded, which must have caused the deformity. 

My mother drank and smoked over the kitchen sink. Maybe she thought we didn’t notice her there. Liter bottles while I took my sisters to the next-door nanny. 

The nanny’s brother made me tell him I loved him, over and over and over again. He’d make my sisters go and play, and held me on his floppy lap, and sucked my ears, and other stuff, until it was over. 

RECIPE FOR DISASTER RELIEF, EXORCISM FROM THE SHITTY GUTS OF HELL OR HOW I BECAME AN ANTELOPE.

1 Leave parents wailing behind. While they throw glass at your back, cross highway into forest, find sand path and climb the dune to the top. Set urge to destroy aside – for now.

2 By the first mound of grass, open your bag. Discard anxiety, temper tantrum, anger black hole and panic attack. Keep only the nugget source of pain, and set aside.

3 In the second dune bowl to the right, a bonfire will have just gone out. Take a piece of coal and eat it. Wait for it to pass. From droppings, extract suffering in its purest form. Mortar with spit to make a bile.

4 Beneath Orion’s belt, mix bile, nugget, urge to destroy, and a quarter pound of gunpowder with both hands and roll into a compact ball. Lie face up and compress into naked chest until diamond forms. Place diamond under tongue and wait until too dark to see. Sleep.

At first light, contraction of the mouth and throat.

Moistening at the noise.

Numbing and elongation of limbs before showing hoof and fur.

5 At dawn, turn white belly to the sand and rub in dew. Piss. Adjust to the grace and height of brand-new spiral horns. Stretch joints, flutter tail. Set for swift gallop.

Poem written at “Poetic Ecology Workshop” at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer isle, Maine, Summer 2019.