Often, there are tunnels and holes and shovels for fingers. This poem is about the digging process.
Now, I am not going to say
what you'd like to hear:
that my mother beat me
on a mountain of clothes,
slipped her belt across my back,
creased my skin like a lawnmower's pen.
I will instead tell how I climbed out of that cell
with a century of tear-shaped barnacles
taped to my waist,
ninety pounds full of rage
and hope,
burrowing down the street, gnawing
the arms of those who got in my way,
running in a manner
that would make birds laugh.
Danielle Hunt, as a child, aspired to be Madonna but instead settled to dance on the hood of a car while waiting for a train to pass. She sometimes despises cell phones but accepts them for their relations with the robots. She lives in Riverside, California and has a fabulous garden.
Table of Contents photo, "Barnacles," by modomatic of flickr.