https://www.jetfuelreview.com/uploads/5/9/9/4/59942345/issue_14.pdf

The philanderer and the harlot gave you the world’s tiniest violin
to play at their multiple weddings. They are your parents.

Across town your sister sits in a flower dress,
only long enough to cover her sadness.

You sing as you play: O, persistent shame, come hither;
ever the second child, they had to throw out the first

not like a baseball or a bouquet but like a miscarriage
spinning in history’s pale, porcelain bowl.

I see you have grown your hair long as a willow.
You are beautiful and wise. When the whispers begin

you never stop cooking
but follow the recipe by heart

so your ears are free to catch even one fact before it’s doused
quick as a firefly, to bring at night to your sister

hidden in the silo. There she sits, a shy ram on the sidelines,
as they go through the grand motions of laying the greater good on the pyre.