Daily Prompt! Claiming What’s Yours

Happy National Poetry Month!❤ Another favorite poet. This poem’s from an amazing collection entitled Red Sugar. If you haven’t read Jan’s work, do it. Seriously.❤



 


I’ll Write the Girl


Jan Beatty


 


The thing I’ll never write is the green leaf


with its rubbery-hard veins, I’ll never


write the structure exposed, instead


 


I’ll write the girl picking it up, green leaf,


her pudgy hand & her wanting it, that’s it,


because she knows the sky is full


 


of stumbling ghosts, & she’s back in the cold


room, back on the dark floor, & along


so much sky, what does one person do?


 


She says, bring it to me & devours,


hungry girl, breaks it open, tastes


the day’s first plasma of leaf, first blood


 


of green on her city street, she takes it


to her like morning’s first kill, &


owns it, stem to point,


 


& knows her life will always


be this biting open one thing


to leave another, that the only


 


way she’ll get anything is


with this tiny hammer


in her animal brain


 


saying: mine,


& again,


& now.

 

Make art about what you’ve claimed as yours.