Daughter, drink the bitter things first:

there is almost always medicine

in what stings most. For instance,

each leaf must steep in boiling water

to do its work. Each blade of grass

must first bruise to become medicine

vervine, soursop, fevergrass:

this is how we teach the tongue. 
We are what grandmothers planted

with their eyes closed
arthritic hands already knowing

what they could not yet see.
We are what sprouts up in backyard buckets

unannounced, to spite the concrete,

to spite the hard earth, to spite

history, hurricane and drought

to spite schools and scripture
This is how we survive: root, rhizome, refusal.
They didn’t know we were seeds,
whole histories set in compost and top soil

hands remembering before language does

A civilization of medicine sleeping in asphalt

bitter caraille creeping through chain-link

shining bush pushing through concrete

like a blessing that forgets how to die