1 poem
HOW TO DRAW YOURSELF AS A DAUGHTER
Begin with you and your mother following the bleeding fox
across the field. No, begin with your mother weeping—
birth this story with your body in the mirror, herringboned
and hemorrhaging into girl. Your mother’s hand
cupped over yours, arcing your arm across red fur.
Voice a new moon
falling into black water. Study in graphite
how girls dress their marrow in blood here,
fasten white buttons across red flannel
and bury dawn behind the sternum. Let’s say
in this little frame of paper
you step toward her
and anything could happen
before sunrise, antlers in your throat. Frost and rust
revealing every father’s tractor on the night highway
a mouth of needles. Grip the pencil
and look into your friend’s eyes
as you both count down to say
the animals you are. The word queer
is barbwire strung across pink sky and snow,
larkspur and lupine rising from pelvis.
Return here to your mother, the fox
dragging itself across frozen grass, the widened eye, the small
red spooling beneath your hands
that don’t know what to call forgiveness,
what to call mercy. Beneath the fur, beneath the ice
you must know how to draw the bones first.
Kelly Weber is the author of the debut poetry collection We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, 2022) and the chapbook The Dodo Heart Museum (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). Her work has received Pushcart nominations and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Brevity, The Missouri Review, The Journal, Palette Poetry, Southeast Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives in Colorado with two rescue cats. More of her work can be found at kellymweber.com.