[daughter]
©2001 Alix Olson.

i’ll teach my daughter
to bang on anything that makes a beat
She’ll shake-a-boom, She’ll quake a room
She’ll paint her cheeks warrior-style, then smile
beguile you, turn you inside out
til your guts plead guilty.

She’ll be built like a truck, built to work you down
as she works herself up
She’ll make holes in the streets
in her ten inch spike heels,
in combat boots, stilts, on roller wheels,
She’ll stroll through Male Pride
Amazon Babes at her side.

She’ll relinquish White Privilege
observe, be wise, She’ll compromise
when the fire is stoked by Other Womyn’s desires
but She’ll never leave the flame.

All the same, She’ll crave what makes her burn
She’ll learn her Cunt’s good name-
the thick red lips, the small hot tip
no more of this cryptic shit.
This Vagina will be known.

She’ll park in all the wrong places,
make faces at police cars,
wind up behind bars, bust out big before serving her time,
fingernails full of this grime we call

Reality,
She’ll dig her way through.

She’ll pick her nose when she has to,
She’ll scratch her ass,
She’ll be a crass medusa child
a wild healthy Fiend
She’ll live in all fonts and all sizes
curly q’s, caps, italics, and Bold.

She’ll fold airplanes out of shredded Cosmos
and Mademoiselles,
then pilot them to Never-Say-Never Land
where Peter Pan’s gay and Wendy’s ok with it.

She’ll wear thick braids, She’ll shave her head,
She’ll eat thick breads, She’ll let her breasts flop,
She’ll mop the floor like Cinderella,
then with Rebellion- Prowess,
She’ll unionize Daughters for a higher allowance.

She’ll be male and female and in-between.
She’ll preen, then crack her mirror, crack a beer
and watch Love Connection.
She’ll go for days without taking a shower
just to feel unchained ivory-slave power.
She’ll want more than what She’s ‘entitled to’
She’ll watch through
Nike commercials
and She’ll Just Un-Do It
ask Who’s making that shit, Who’s breaking their backs
keeping her breaking that
glass ceiling.

She’ll do all of this.
and She’ll do none of this.

and it’s funny how we hide behind these Daughters,
hide ahead of our own Herstories
scared of ourselves
scared of the world
scared of Someone
who made us
one way
or another.

Well, this time around,
i’ll be bound to my own mind womb
in my own birthing room,
i’ll squeeze out, squeeze out
each crimson thick belief
then eat each pungent, sweet placenta
and relieved,

i will tear up this country’s
"Welcome to the World" certificate,
tear off my father’s father’s father’s father’s name,
i’ll legitimate my own entrance into a
Thinking Existence
i will birth myself towards
Resistance.

But no frantic tick-tock of this Biological Clock.
On my own time, Foremothers at my sides,
Sisters as midwives,
i’ll cut my cord, head for that War
i will mother myself into my own grown Daughter
and I will call myself a
Home-Grown Woman.