because I walk the state line like a railroad track.
Train is a question I carry in my womb. Every girl
needs a pink purse for holding questions,

and the answers vibrate up through the soles
of her church shoes. My shoes are not on the wrong
feet. I am not cross-eyed or rabbit-eyed. Only one

albino in town and he ain’t me, but I’m mixed up.
Hair stylist is an egg beater. When I was coming up
my food was library paste and cracker sandwiches.

Well read. Well fed. Now that I’ve bled I can stroll
the incision between there and there. I represent,
like a town queen, but bigger. Like a grain elevator,

but without the combustible dust. If you ride a slow
pony along some edge, you’ll know. One foot
in the land of milkweed, the other in the land of rust.

Diane Seuss’s second collection of poems, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, won the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry. The book was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2010. Recent work has appeared in Hanging Loose, The Georgia Review andPoetry. She is the Writer in Residence at Kalamazoo College.