Self-Portrait As A Butter-Churner Poem by Sarah Vap

Fungi-like white angels
with the dozen long clear wings
inside testicles, highly-magnified:
obstinate coils
with beaks like scythes—sweet-cream butter, or salted—
this is how I will know

if I can make a home. My great-grandmothers
in the Moravian salt marsh
gathered minerals

for their crystal mill—but was that enough to know
if they'd laid down the burden
to pick up a more natural responsibility?

Linked pinkies,
the edges of our closed eyes
like belts of wood beneath the cooper's

certain ascending and descending hoops—
mouthfuls at the crank of the barrel-churn, of sweet cream
before the butter arrives.