Mom made us matching guidebooks to Alaska,
copied, bound in a Kinkos
in the Valley on a school day.
We have made it. The frontier.
Rented car & Day Four:
Mom hides out in a Kodiak
internet café, dashes off missives
to RootBeer, secret boyfriend,
former country-music DJ.
RootBeer is not yet a known threat
to our family. We drive through Denali,
denial. I listen only & wholly
to Barenaked Ladies, press play,
play, play. I pretend it hardly matters
our father refuses our rotation
of sitting backseat. The only male,
he is perpetually the assumptive
shotgun. I am fourteen. Life just now grows
its big tits of unfair. We are here in Alaska
on a ten-day car trip.
In six months, she’ll admit the affair.
In a year he’ll sign off on divorce.
I’ll stay a virgin three years after that
but here in Alaska
is the first place men see me,
see my breasts orbiting within
my galaxy of skin.
My body’s the eventual
swirling Milky Way. When a stranger
in flannel blows a kiss on the highway,
I press one nipple to the window
of our rented Ford Escape.
My family drives three hours
to stare at black worms trapped in glaciers.
We come back at twilight & walk in pairs: girls
& grown-ups on the dock.
Between salmon dead
& salmon dying, Mom
holds our father’s hand in the light.
It’s midnight & I notice
men & women everywhere
flip a universe for cock.