Vesuvius
It was at first fire
Then volcanoes
Now the latest fear keeping
My daughter’s door open
Through the night
Is that of being afraid
Is there a narrator in this show
She asks as the authority
Of the voiceover in the cartoon
Loses what I imagine as credibility
In her six-year-old mind
It’s a creation myth
The one she’s watching
Because it was intentional
For months before her conception
I was afraid of having sex
As though there’s an answer
That would eclipse this
New-found complication
How can I not be scared
Of being scared she asks
Never trust the authority
Of the narrator I want
To tell her but I’d be lying
Copyright © 2019 by Noah Eli Gordon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 30, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem’s aboutness is there, right there, on the surface. It’s a talisman. I wrote it to project into the world my desire to protect my daughter, to empower her with the ability to protect herself. And yet, I think the poem also asks if creating something else—whether it’s a work of art or a child—is an amplification or destruction of one’s I?”
—Noah Eli Gordon
Noah Eli Gordon
Noah Eli Gordon is the author of Is That the Sound of a Piano Coming from Several Houses Down (Solid Objects, 2018).