Heather Napualani Hodges

Each Love Is The Selfish Love

                               //

Traditionally a body in its longing turns to salt.

We punish the gesture. Which is looking back. Which is the city that is burning.
But with children inside. Which only women do. So really, we punish the dress.
Which absolves the gesture.

The ocean is inside you they say. As if this helps.

Fidelity.

I walk around all day like this.

                               //

Myth is unusual in that it does nothing. In that it deeply informs.

For example children.

                               //

What is understood to be susceptible.

                               //

In every version I see my mother raped by birds.

Leda Leda

Nature makes us mourn. That it does not belong to you.

                               //

The innocuous things.

At birth, the body weighs the same as potatoes.

I came out after seven dead ones.

                               //

What is mostly hair in a field has agency, turns around.

Your own private banshee. In the other world were all these children planting lettuce out back.

                               //

Saying goes

Say it three times to make it true. Three times and like a fruit the face unfastens.

The day plurals.

                               //

So go ahead and shoot it. Shoot Nature in the face.

                               //

It grows a new one.

 

What We Called The Animal When We Thought It Was Asleep

There are seven things inside the body
can’t be helped.

I’ve loved most everything in my life incorrectly.

 

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Heather Napualani Hodges is like you. But part of her bottom lip is dead. She teaches Intro to Poetry Writing at Portland State University, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing. Available for creative writing consulting and sandwiches. Email her at: heather dot napualani @gmail dot com.