Somali grrl/spread eagle/surrounded by black faces
hips that have made room for heads/breasts
accustomed to the heat of men’s palms/the moist want
of babies’ tongues/one day their eyes will be hers
plague her dreams like the face of the elder/unfolding
tools crude and saw-toothed/elder hovering
like each breath the grrl takes/before clitoral amputation
labia clipped like wings/scalloped perimeter
embossed in the dirt road she walks to grandmother’s/or
where she was headed before the ambush/filled with
a child’s thoughts/random happy thoughts
that did not leave her/hemorrhaging curbside/the women
do not apologize for the dirty knife/the women
do not explain why the men praise her fragrant howling
drink to the scent of her blood/the blade/trimmed with
dried skin of grrls whose bright bodies had skipped
across that earth/bearing foods or messages/for family
the women restraining her/the elder/ones
who have ambushed and been ambushed/dehydrated
as old woman stitched their vulvas with catgut/or thorns
bound their legs for chastity/tradition/dowry/her opening
size of a sparrow’s head/hemmed in time for autumn harvest
debutante ball for grrls who’ve resisted death’s swagger
who come to their husbands cystic/anemic/newly wed
to romantic infection/and what of the dying grrls
a few years out of their mother’s wombs/grrls drunk
off the scent of themselves/bleeding out/freshly cut
to some man’s specification/what of these
made-to-order bodies/robbed of breasts/menses
motherhood/one can know only what ails the living
unripe black of adolescence/the divine disfigurement
of a grrl/ill at ease/everywhere
           a farmer needs a wife/requires a strong back
for hauling/can afford her family’s asking price/higher after
circumcision
how brilliantly the word lies/its political career set
grrl-bride virtuous/prettied/will be obedient
though her body will struggle against sex/it will be taken
as the clitoris was taken/her tightness will excite
the farmer/the conquered black/black eyes/of the ambushed
women also wanting to occupy her/waiting their turn