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The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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True Metal

           a golden bracelet, the one from your mother, you mean to pass onto your daughter, not the oldest one because she is the story of travel, but the next one who holds your skirt when you sit on the couch reading the news in English 

flowers ribbon a single braid 
you comb her hair with your fingers, lace in silk threads,  
tatreez, alphabet home

prayer 
prayer 
prayer 
                  good night my darlings

                                                sky fall

            caved breastplate 
            curled spine 
            thunder  
            against   
prayer  
prayer 
prayer  
                  knees crack 
                  wrists bound 
                  slit up the middle  
           They will show the pictures of you collapsing onto the stones, they will show you 
ground into stone, they will shovel you under the world, they will go after more. 

            And you molten.

Copyright © 2025 by Elmaz Abinader. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 24, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader
Courtesy of Elmaz Abinader
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Khaled Mattawa is the Guest Editor of December. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mattawa about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
New Year Joanna Klink 02/21/2017
This Moment / Right Now Roberto Carlos Garcia 02/20/2017
Protest Ella Wheeler Wilcox 02/19/2017
Good Hours Robert Frost 02/18/2017
Control Feast Elizabeth Metzger 02/17/2017
At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac Samiya Bashir 02/16/2017
At the Metropolitan Museum Matthew Siegel 02/15/2017
Heart to Heart Rita Dove 02/14/2017
What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do Parneshia Jones 02/13/2017
Adolescence Claude McKay 02/12/2017

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