Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer

Golden Shovel Reaching for My Country

After Terrance Hayes, using a line from Leila Chatti

This morning is not my hands, but my
tongue begging for a place to put my name; God
 
is a bruised mouth rooting for the nipple. I was taught
to love this country as a matter of course. Imagine me,
 
a false American bell tolling in the back of my throat, and hunger
gnawing an open field into my stomach, wide as a ditch and drumming. It is
 
enough to draw a border around my wrist, a 
line that connects me to my mother, my motherland―a gift. 
 
It is enough to call it 
a hook, reeling me into the boat. Leaving sweetens
 
the ache, and I cannot rest, will not stop for want of the
country, my country a black sleeve, a meal
 
of silence. It is here I try to get back to you, all
my pasts, my many selves, swarming. Day
 
light breaks like a kaleidoscope through my eye. I
have lived so that I may answer to you, have
 
forgotten my language, gone
without.

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s (they/she) work has previously been published or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Crazyhorse, Poet Lore, Beloit Poetry Journal, and others. The recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize, they have won awards from the Ledbury Poetry Festival and Bryn Mawr College, as well as received support from The Seventh Wave and Tin House. Their chapbook, Small Geometries, is forthcoming with Ethel Zine & Micro Press in April/May 2023. They attend Syracuse University’s MFA program. Find them on twitter at @kb_pfotenhauer or at their website kcbrattpfotenhauer.wixsite.com.