Today's poem is by Kara van de Graaf

Heir
       

They say it gives the mother
heartburn, that dark shock

on the head that can only be seen
after the baby is born.

What parts of a woman
must be dismantled

only to reappear again
as ringlets or something softer,

fine down that makes a girl
pretty. As a girl scout, I went

to a farm just before a storm.
Sometimes, the air fills with so much

electricity it can seem
like the head is floating away,

these strands lighter than we are,
subject to other laws of gravity.

I remember where they housed the sheep.
They went in one end of a building,

heavy as a cumulus, and reappeared
on the other side, thin. Sometimes,

they had small wounds on the skin
where the shears had come too near.

And later, let free from the pen,
they grazed, naked and newly vulnerable,

suddenly awake to the sounds
of things with teeth, a coyote or a dog

whose bark made them all
lift their heads at the same time.

Tweet
Copyright © 2023 Kara van de Graaf All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission