Everything Exactly as It Seems

I with my gun 
am a good mother

I cut my daughters mouth 
on teeth 
in the oatmeal

I pay heavily 
for the meat 
I slip past her gums

so she will 
value the taste 
of blood and 
                     metal

We live in the country 
with our designer sheep

and rescued dogs 
pace the fences 
we have made of the field

let our eggs roll 
from the counter

With a bird in my hand 
trembling      until faint 
                       until not

I tell her stories 
of the sea 
of her own 
          violent arc 
she must inherit 
and shape with her small hands

to buoy the barrel

Credit

Copyright © 2025 by Abigail Chabitnoy. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“I wrote this poem as a new mother. My work is forever seabound, and I’d hoped motherhood would reset the landscape. I still often find myself on the shoreline. But I’m finding more of the ‘real’ world—not the hypothetical or past, but the inescapable ‘now’—entering my poems. It’s not enough to consider what kind of descendant I am: What kind of ancestor will I be? What kind of descendant am I raising? How [can I] give her all the strength that I don’t feel like I have some days, without turning her heart to stone for its own protection?” 
—Abigail Chabitnoy