I smudge henna above our bed protect us
from the evil eye rub it on our grassy
cow’s forehead in the backyard My ex’s
mama Sally named me La Henna as a joke
for how my name sounded in Spanish like I was gringa
until she realized my mama’s Mexican too
but the apodo stuck like red rice in the belly
My husband steams the carpets with Fabuloso
purple cleanser Sally once bought from Dollar Store
picking me out dish towels & plastic table cloths
for my all-alone apartment her son wouldn’t leave
her house for mine he didn’t love me enough
I’m terrified my daughter will turn gourd & fennel
for a boy who’ll believe she’s no different
than the Maxim or Showtime-bodied targets
he calls women will hold her head down make her
swallow The springtime smell of Callery Pear blooms
gorgeous white buds that make me gag
I spit on the sidewalk La Henna dripping
bloodstone ghost of a girl who’ll shove bezoars
down a daughter’s throat to keep her from pulling
worms from the stomach Sex is not a plague
my husband tells me spring cleaning our sheets
flipping our mattress redbrick stains menstrual
corral gates dripping rust relentless in a patch
of spines darling girl I’m sorry the body resigns
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors’ Prize) and Protection Spell (2016 Miller Williams Series, University of Arkansas Press, forthcoming). Her honors include an NEA Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latin@ Scholarship, The 2015 Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, The Pinch Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net 2015, Best New Poets 2013, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, and The Kenyon Review. She is Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal and teaches at The Poetry Barn.