GROWING SCALES AND OTHER FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS

my mother on the other end of the coiled
                   phone cord describes her insides
                                    as being of snakes
chewing holes in the lining
                                    of her good winter coat          rattling
             until she feels them under her fingernails
one of her coat threads is sewn
                  mother to daughter       Florida to Alabama
           holding us together in our serpentine sickness
I am cold all the time stretched out on a heating pad
            I tell her my temperature is 100 and rising

her fever is 101 she says          rattlers are sunning
                        in the rocks on her property’s edge
                 they get heavy with rats
                                  that come drunk out of the garden
               on yellow squash on parsnips
and old pasta from the compost pile
           she turns the pile          with her nose pinched
shovel like a spatula in a lasagna of rot
each winter layer I shuck in fever
                               adds me a new rattle to my growing tail

                                  she scoops old goat shit
from the barn into the wheelbarrow
                                  to fertilize next year’s rising crop
       she finds the snakes under the foundation
leaves them be           in their cool stupor
                   lets them live to eat another rat
         a would-be garden thief      caught in a god’s jaw
                  a late storm leans the crumbling beams over
pushes the antique wood into the empty lot next door

                  she says the rattlers find a new place to sun
on the hundred-year August-bleached wood
                  as if to say we will take your barn
we will love this rot
                  we will lie here if you won’t
                                     make our bodies warm in our sun
and we will be here when you come
to understand that you cannot
                                     fully shed         what tethers you
when your rattles grow in
                  they’ll hurt like wisdom teeth

my mother texts me a video of a dead rattlesnake
                                     I ask her which one is easier to kill
                  the rats           or the rattlers
       she says this one was quick got too brave
                 and writhes after shovel and neck meet
       the snake watches its own severing
                                     shovel cleaving scale cleaving scale
my coat is larger than my mother’s
       made of diamonds
                 sewn together with snakeskin