Good blood: a poem on Mother’s Day

May 11th, 2008

After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed

by Rita Dove

I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me… I’m Mickey!

My daughter spreads her legs
to find her vagina:
hairless, this mistaken
bit of nomenclature
is what a stranger cannot touch
without her yelling. She demands
to see mine and momentarily
we’re a lopsided star
among the spilled toys,
my prodigious scallops
exposed to her neat cameo.
And yet the same glazed
tunnel, layered sequences.
She is three; that makes this
innocent. We’re pink!
she shrieks, and bounds off.

Every month she wants
to know where it hurts
and what the wrinkled string means
between my legs. This is good blood
I say, but that’s wrong, too.
How to tell her that it’s what makes us–
black mother, cream child.
That we’re in the pink
and the pink’s in us.

Filed under Poetry, Righteous Ribs, Tres Cool |

2 Responses to “Good blood: a poem on Mother’s Day”

  1. PhoneFeminist on May 11, 2008 9:13 pm

    Wow. I’ve never seen that before and I LOVE it. Thank you for posting :-)

  2. Uppity on May 12, 2008 12:12 pm

    You are very welcome, PhoneFem. It’s one of my faves.

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