an entryway or an exit

Rowan Tate

how do you explain blood
to a man, the blood it takes
to make a person, that you spend
a life stomaching as it leaks
out of you in dark hot stains until
one day it begins to clot
and make a face, a face
you will feed, a mouth that will
bite you and say your name
back to you, an organ
outside of you walking
away from you, an object that
bleeds your blood, another
mind, a red song, how do you explain
all the bodies
yours can make,
all the eyes that could be
shed out of you from this
wet place inside of you
filled with flesh
where life dies
and a whole generation slips out
slick between your legs—the
beginning and the end of wars,
a stranger you have been nursing
and carrying all of your life, how do you
explain blood to a man.