I have spent my days
turning again and again
toward warmth
inviting friends and even
strangers to dance across my flesh
feeling myself grow
thicker
rounder
heavier
with their offerings
old promiscuities create
possibilities for new ones
what I offer has changed
and so have the faces
of my visitors
but not my joy in receiving them
this new abundance
pulls my gaze toward earth
the promises of rain moistened soil
and the view of places I
might sink into and call myself
home
Jenny L. Davis is a Two-spirit/Indigiqueer citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and an Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she is the director of the American Indian Studies Program. Her 2022 poetry manuscript, Trickster Academy, was published in the University of Arizona Press Sun Tracks Series, and her creative writing has been published in SAPIENS; American Indian Culture and Research Journal; Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Transmotion; Anomaly; Santa Ana River Review; Broadsided; North Dakota Quarterly; Yellow Medicine Review; As/Us; Raven Chronicles; and is forthcoming in Gathering in the Glittering Field: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Poetry, among others.