The song she sings if of
Refrigerator mothers
Who broke the dishwasher –
Where dishwasher is, of course, a euphemism
For that great, unbearable railroad
That synthesizes fire and the microwave
Base metal and Le Tour Eiffel.

That track forged by begetting
With each mother’s fingers crossed
To spark into being some electric wunderkind.

Crawling off to steal sleep
From the ravenous thing she bore,
She looks like a train wreck
Belching out the smoky decay of a limb
Or half-born creation.

When it feasted on her, she felt like
A prune being pickled or –
She might’ve said, if she ever knew,
Ever saw, ever scaled the spiral of hope -
A Shanghai soup dumpling siphoned through a straw.