Cord or twine used to bind 
or cover a rope, keep the ends
from fraying.
To begin, 

place a hand 
on your daughter’s shoulders.
Tell her fifth grade is 
a bloodletting.

Show her your own path
of hard turns taken
before you were hauled taut
and loosed into motherhood.

Say, this knot 
is a folded note. 
This knot is a map

back to me. Lay out a rope.
Tell her to gather each end.
Say stitch them tight
or burn them down.

Related Poems

paper dolls (for darnell arnoult)

perhaps
it is the joy of tomato sandwiches
the smell of jergens and jean nate
at thirteen
or our love still for grandmothers aunts
who enter rooms
largely sideways
hips broad enough
to use as sideboards
maybe it is the value
we place on duke’s mayonnaise
the sandwich spread for queens…

whatever wherever and for ever more
we are little girls
revisiting space
rebuilding houses
renaming mothers…

perhaps it is the secret
knotted inside the pleats of skirt hems
sewn along scarf edges
fringed secret whispers
that whisper a familiar smell…

whatever we become
sisters
stealing a moment
to cast word spells
undress our mothers
repaint their lips with anything red anything Italian
drench their heads with ancient clairol wisdom
anoint their hands with herstorical bronze
queen of the nile henna…

we reembrace
lace
full petticoats
white linen skirts
sailor dresses
patent leather

for the pretty pirates
swans
ballerinas
we will become…

perfumed necks
wrists adorned
in vintage memory
cut carefully
along the edges
of this madness
this magic…

we lie down
and wait for the moon
to trace us.

Warn the Young Ones

First war       She polishes the spine of her own
flesh       Tethered nerve      strangling cord       She

burial mounds       She rituals       She
corn stalks in rustling fields       Nothing tribe

nothing sex       Rock for riverbed       Notched
with flint       Second war       She needs less       Sequoia

burns       Cities       In her body      wrappings
of bodies       She debates running       She debates peeling

skin       She stops debating      begins praying without
knees       Not for rain       Prays rain       Holy nothing

unlaces nothing remembered nothing
forgiven—          Come others       Third war      

She is a void in the particle machine       She is dust     
Fourth war she loses the need for water       She loses

all taste       Rain brings each earthwormed corpse       Nothing
ugly       Turn not       Her face from the dead       She

resurgence       She fable of bee boxes
& honey       She ark of some lost territory

of animals       She zebras       She aardvarks      
She dredges the flooded streets of her      the gutters    

Fifth war       She grows stronger       All that can be
taken she takes       All that can be eaten

she swallows       All that can be broken she
pulls into her belly & releases       Nothing is whole     

Sixth war       She loses her appetite       Her bones brittle     
The cabbage in the broth bitters       She

pulls from ribcages       Hearts       Uses them
as weapons       Seventh war       The cord she began with      

Nothing like a noose       She would rest       Longs for nothing
but rest       Each threaded backbone slips its knot       Nothing

transforms       She wants to tell you this is the end       She wants 

Sara in Her Father’s Arms

Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells
Made cells. That is to say
The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father’s arms, the little seed eyes
Moving, trying to see, smiling for us
To see, she will make a household
To her need of these rooms—Sara, little seed,
Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world
Glittering: this seed will speak,
Max, words! There will be no other words in the world
But those our children speak. What will she make of a world
Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.