Camille Newsom​
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Our Ancestry

Chickens sing to lambs
for silken wings, and lambs
to chickens for angels. Mom,

please be raw. Composed
flesh is never gold. You,
and your green darkness,

your glass eye, years of body,
unborn and absolute. We’d
station together, as one:

big bed, back scratches,
father’s knowledge
and bones. But then,

my bricks of withdrawal built
a stoop behind your house,
where spring stars, white

and round as tins, came
and closed my moonlit eyelids
to you. I drew all your blood

out of me, and prayed
for a flood in my veins.
Forget the plainness

of power. Remember light
above all beasts can hollow
out the sky. When murdering,

I, an unearthly, fatten lonely
constellations with kisses.
How young and cannibal

my mouth can be
when comfort is at sea.
My ear is odd,

like grandmother. We,
the family line of wacky girls,
remembered for brilliance

and extraordinary hair,
became wild witches.
It’s literal. The gathering.

​The raising for weeping.

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Camille Newsom is a livestock farmer in Western Michigan. In her poems she observes our living and dying world through humor, grief, and a sprinkling of spite. Her first chapbook is This Suffering and Scrumptious World (Galileo Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Southword, ONE ART, Terrain.org, Main Street Rag, MAYDAY, and others.