Mother Sentience
Shroud: burial garment or something that covers, screens, or guards
Inheritance: a thing that is inherited or the action of inheriting.
Quarantine: from the the Latin quadraginta and the Italian quaranta, both meaning “40.” 40 appears often in biblical contexts dealing with judgment or testing, many scholars understand it to be the number of “probation” or “trial”— paraphrased from theologian, Benjamin Warfield,
Inheritance — 40 Shrouds for a Poem in 40 Words, cheesecloth shrouds, hardened with gel medium and formed into spaces to hold a word written on translucent silk.
Gilded platter —
my face, my father,
his mother,
my children.
Glow swallows
us whole: a net,
a pool, an ocean.
Cloaked,
the fractured cylinder
of light we believe
is a beacon blurs
fuzzy beneath
the shadow
of a whale.
