To Measure the Earth

The inchworm is green as the Sour Punch

candy my brother hands me. I have eaten

a world-record amount of Sour Punch Bites;

two hundred in 10 minutes.

My tongue, abraded. My mouth, bitter pucker.

Outside, the white monotony of snow

on the road and the fields beside the road. My brother

won’t turn on the radio; his voice takes me back

45 years. I grip the steering wheel

and the backs of my hands tighten when we hit ice.

When my brother opens the bag, the Sour Punch

Bites secrete artificial fruit. The scent

beats like a drumstick on a cymbal, a shivery

noise in my nostrils. We left the Five Points

Correctional Facility and it was spring,

fields green as inchworms and my nephew dead

not even a week. The bag of Sour Punch Bites

asks the corrections officer to use the restroom.

A geometer moth flaps its wings and an inchworm

lands in my hair. “Every time I pop out

you know I A.T.E,” I sing loud

along with GloRilla, my car windows up.

The strappy sandals of sorrow bite my heels.

I am full as an empty shopping cart. My brother

transforms into an inchworm in my passenger seat.

Ho to the Jo, they called me at my last job.

They called me the Hammer. When my nephew gets out

of Five Points Correctional Facility we will toast

with cans of Twisted Tea. With bioluminescent

cans of Twisted Tea. We are the survivors

and the perpetrators too. Dios Mio, my husband sighs,

mimicking a skit from Saturday Night Live. The bag

of Sour Punch Bites puts on a camo

jacket and goes back inside for stragglers. Cymbals

crash and one of them tumbles to the deck of the ship

after first striking a woman’s leg. The female

geometer moth is born without wings.

Hope Jordan’s work appears most recently in Cutleaf, Hole in the Head Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Stone Canoe. She grew up in Chittenango, NY, holds a dual BA from Syracuse & an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Boston. She lives in NH, where she was the state’s first official poetry slam master. Her chapbook is The Day She Decided to Feed Crows.