I was the child born hybrid
from the fissure

that sent black rock
and white ash. Rendered

from magnets, minerals, and medicinal plants.
If you bit me

hard enough to break skin, I would
poison you.

The other children poked me
with willow branches,

but they could not deliver
the hot copper from my veins.

I slept under the snow,
hoping my body

would freeze and crack,
that my soul would steam upwards.

I only melted a circle around me
by morning.

I could never remember
my lessons,

so when the teacher chose me,
I would recite

the old story from memory.
Its diction had nursed me

at my bedside. Mother taught me
how grandfather

stripped his children’s backs
with a switch, how he held them

under water. Mother taught me
the old story,

that it might fortify
my blood, like nutrients. At the head

of the class, I tilted my neck
to sing it in couplets, summoning

the harmonica
of an old goose’s throat—

the key in which
the story wanted to be told.

I could not predict
how the words would turn fragile and molt

in the fluorescent classroom light;
how the other children

would corner me later, and call me
the beast who bays in the night.