sometimes I fear my five
unborn daughters: Andraste Aoife Anat ah
what are their names all five will one day ask me
after the day of their unbirth they will ask what
did you do when you were still not old but also young
no longer were you mute and one of everyone no different
my five unborn daughters are smarter than me
they already learned inside the body that I am or was I
to play cello orally they can fluently read coffee grounds
and speak in tongues their first poem they wrote shortly
after their birth in Moselle Romance Ruthenian and Thracian
they translated every language into every other one
my five unborn daughters gave me for the first of May
an endless alphabet with no instruction manual
they rigged me up a short-wave receiver in my heart and
brought me to life again five times and again attached me
to car batteries illegally until the frequencies hissed in unison
they laid their ears devotionally upon my receiver
my five unborn daughters are skilled at
hunger typhus cholera and ebola
they live in a tent city on the edges of Nevada today
and tomorrow in the sleep silos of Shenzhen
I taught them 126o words for grief we wrote
about the empathists’ international in our first manifesto
my five unborn daughters skipped every
class with the slide rule they proved
the plutocratic turn secretly training putsch and potlatch
they give everyone fire nitroglycerine and opportunity
from their nightmares they mill black powder
an old home remedy against bull and bear
my five unborn daughters call me two times
a week via satellite they ask about the situation
and my tears’ probability of precipitation
they ask for the addresses of dictators
the skeleton key to prisons and the latest
statistical findings on human stupidity
I send my five unborn daughters
the names the key and a bag of chocolate
coins in the fourth world I’m sometimes allowed to hum
to them in the night then their moods get so low
so incredibly low that they pulse against their
thin skull bones and they ask me for
my five unborn daughters who will one day
ask me what did you do when you were still not old but
also not young did you write ridiculous poems
and administer your days over a desk did you ever
think of us feel constantly ashamed I will not lie
and helplessly hum them back into the body that I was