Honorable Mention, Diana Der-Hovanessian Prize, selected by Eric Hyett
Papa, you wanted a son
Papa, you wanted a son
and yet
this head was born to you
A ingrowing plant
A fingernail
A pond
So you said
quietly to the placenta: “A CHILD IS A MAN”
You thought to be a man meant to quietly go fishing
to fish for life
to catch it in the water
and you take me fishing so I can learn to be a man
so in life I can catch something warm to kill
“Killing makes you a man,” you told me
You thought to be one meant to merrily go hunting
to aim a rifle at a heart with horns
blow the brains out of life
you think the thing the forest dreams up is a man
and you take me hunting so I can see for myself
you teach me to shoot at a tree
at a cloud still a little girl in my mind
because I think too easy, you say
because I think things that cut through each other
And yet a man isn’t crippled by cramps
says the lame-in-the-armpits mother
he doesn't bleed in the hallways
or spray his milk over open sonograms
or shove his index finger up
to touch God
in a volcanic pelvis
A daughter kills
but like a man breathing backwards
deep in the woods
An umbilical love that snakes around your apple:
a daughter is an eye that takes a bite
–a milk-jaw–
a lure to heaven full of hair
So “fish for death,” Mama says as she licks the shotgun
“hunt for life”
like a daughter who is a man and a head
like a river on a sheet of mammoth teeth
and the bullet's open sex
dripping all over the counter
Kymm Coveney
Kymm Coveney (Boston, 1959) has lived in Spain since the 1982 World Cup. She is a freelance writer and translator, as well as habitual translation slam moderator for MET (Mediterranean Editors and Translators) and cohost of Barcelona’s PoémameBCN. Her flash fiction, poems and translations can be found online through betterlies.blogspot.com.