To Be a Daughter
And To Have a Daughter(An Excerpt)
can forecast at-odds relationships
— from The New Yorker, 23 March 2020
especially when the mother hazards to write
while keeping the baby safe
from herself as she and the baby wail,
one in the crib, the other on the floor, to wail
with the vacuum cleaner so the daughter
can’t hear mama-drowning, so the new relationship
isn’t all arithmetic and geometry, all right
angles barely connecting. What is left
at dusk, still tender and safe,
- Kimiko Hahn teaches at Queens College, City University of New York. Her latest poetry collection is Foreign Bodies.
Kanlaon 