The Most Unlikely of Passages

The Museum of Mothers is free on Fridays.
I go with Rheim, who is also not a mother,

though she carries around a bag of needles
she bought years ago from an Iraqi woman

everyone called Zahra. Rheim gave names
to each of their lean metallic bodies.

We start in the sculpture garden, which the curators
have named Sorry for Suffering—You Think

I’m a Puppy on a Picnic?
We are encouraged to touch the sculptures,

which are all trees. It is not clear if we can also
ask them questions about the suffering—if love

is single strand of goat hair or needle’s eye,
if the cold rust in my chest is omen

or birthmark, and in the dream, Mama,
you were bleeding and something

was wrong with the clitoris, why?
Rheim threads the blood

and milk and the sordid soil leaking
from the trees and makes bouquets

of small pink cloves. When she lays them
by the sculptures, it is so dark we start to question

the laws of this place. We bury the needles over
the earth and run from the trees

like falcons or dismembered hounds, or wait,
I dreamed I had another mother, can we look for her?

Read more from Issue 18.1.