Poetry Daily yellow logo
DaMaris B. Hill
You are mother. You are a girl and four
years old the day you learn to swim.

your father, a carpenter and a fisher
of men, like God's holy son, lays

you on a board and sets you on the waves.
You are baptized in wonder. You believe

the wood to be the plank of Noah's Ark.
You grow to believe a small thing can alter

destiny. The plank is removed. You are
a legend, the little girl conquering the ocean.

The tides of your girlhood shape the shores
of your knowing. Your daughters question why

you exhaust yourself with worry, ceding to
concern. Sea salt polished your toddler face.

You bite your nails. Your daughters catch
a whiff of salt seething from your tonsils. You,

puzzled by the wilds before you, you do not
realize that you are already doing the unimaginable,

raising one girl after another. The eldest is a siren
bearing your name. Your daughters beach whales

and conjure clouds. Your daughters are the work
you are forced to do and your desires for sons

swell. You abandon your daughters in expan-
sive anxieties. You're obsessed with sons, tread

the tears of King Henry's wanton wives. You
see fate as a buoy, cradling flesh. Your body

is an unwavering presence before your husband.
Your daughters resent lighthouses, welcome

tempests. Your daughters long to know you, sand
stinging in their eyes. You want to reinvent yourself,

chasing raindrops with your tongue, trying to be enough
for someone's grown son, baiting the heavens for a boy.
from the book BREATH BETTER SPENT: LIVING BLACK GIRLHOOD / Bloomsbury
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
"Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood," presents unflinching interpretations of Black girlhood in American culture and beyond. "Baiting Boys" is a poem about how society prioritizes and values sons and patriarchal structures of family.

DaMaris B. Hill on "Baiting Boys"

Thanks so much to our generous supporters like Aaron who help us open a door to a world of poets! You can join Aaron and our other monthly recurring donors at https://tinyurl.com/u4pxta5f. 
"Richard Howard, Acclaimed Poet and Translator, Is Dead at 92"

"Richard Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who made the venerable genre of the dramatic monologue speak in a modern voice, and whose translations brought the work of Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet and dozens of other French writers to an Anglophone audience, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 92."

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry:
Moheb Soliman (Great Lakes, MN) on Ecopoetry Now

"This brings you to 'On the water;' this is where the poem dwells. Trying to dream about water, or the opposite—sleep on water. A poem as oblivious as you could get to the complaints above. There are other poems in the book that are more critically, consciously, 'ecopoetic.' When you were asked months ago to choose one and discuss your earth-centered poetics through it, a dozen others came to mind—poems that fessed up to climate change and sea-level rise and invasive species."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2022 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency