All in the Stars

My mother was an Aries

caught between ram and war god,

  her spatula set to flip pancakes

or smack the sin out of any fool

who blasphemed scriptures,

     spoke in tongues when

she didn’t know the words to a song,

figuring the Lord was the only

one who needed to understand.

I was a Cancer, sleeper cell

      moon goddess who kept

her legs shut, hand wedged between

thighs, fingers strumming as if I

could make my own music.

My mother wanted

a daughter clean as fire,

held the oil lamp steady

as a surgeon as she waved it

over my body to exorcise

demons and the ability to orgasm.

I still woke up wet and prayed to God—

the originator of

       hellfire and Dairy Queens—

to save me from rapture of all kinds.

We were tired as Cain and Abel,

shouted into a grey softball sky for judgement;

neither of us needed salvation so much

as to know which one was cursed

to survive the other.