of my mother/a shovel in her hand/severing the head of a snake/trying to get into the back of the house/I watched the shovel pierce flesh & dirt & earth/not in my house, she says/not in my house/its body coiled in a corner/where my dad said he would pave with cement/but never did/so every time it rains I go out back/to the square patch of mud/& stomp my feet to squeeze the water out/the snake is lifeless/my mother looks at me/watching her/ the blood dark red at her feet/the shovel wet with it/it was poisonous she assures me/ I know now that red & yellow means death/but I had never seen my mother kill anything before/& it felt the same as that time she took a drag from my dad’s cigarette before he left for work/her cough bringing tears to her eyes/her mascara smearing at the bottom/I don’t know her/but sometimes I forget there was a time before me/when she scribbled hearts in her middle school notebook/& waited tables at Bonanza on 10th Street/before she was a mother that had to be afraid of/everything/not in my house, she says/not in my house