Your scalpel maps split my mother’s tongue—
half sutured to your Bible’s Our Father,
half choking on Kanien’kéha vowels
that blister her throat like PCB tea.

My knees remember the boarding school’s
linoleum gods, how they scrubbed our skin
with lye hymns till the water ran
with braid-snippings and dead eels.

At the clinic, the nurse marks my chart
Diabetes. Depression. Genetic Disposition.
She doesn’t write sturgeon-blood,
Rotinonshon:ni spine, or how my ribs

still curve like cradleboard willows
beneath this GM work shirt. The fetal monitor
beeps where my daughter floats—
already her cells glow

with the mercury our nets once lifted
from clear waters. I hum the Ohenton
through N95 straps, taste aluminum
on my teeth like Communion wafers.

When the priest says body of Christ,
I open my mouth: out swims
a scaled ghost, its gills frilled
with factory ash, still singing

the river’s true name
in a language that leaves
no scars on the ultrasound.