Thursday, I am born,

of the white glove’s lazy C-section, twilight
of the gods who couldn’t give my mother
more time, instead unspooled her innards,
attempted anthropomancy, divined her son
a serpent circling the world. My birth
paradoxical, of the myth that this world has
a beginning, an end. To the doctors, my body
grows suspiciously quick. On the block, my head
looms above the branches. Bewitched
by Mercedes, I lose her basketball bet, wear
the pink skirt, pretend rebus, double-headed beast.
Society strikes first. An officer accuses me of looming
over fences. The old heads accuse me of being sweet.
I open my mouth & four canines. I open my mouth
& the cujo’s bat-bitten. I open my mouth & Fenrir’s
wild gnawing the hand that feeds. It is the forgotten
eighth day that something inside me dies inside
of my own mouth and putrefaction sets in. Mourning,
I don black jeans, black hoodie, black menis.
A white man crosses the street when he sees: me,
maggots, muspell, multiple choices in the form
of one question. What follows? What follows.