On a late drive home, my daughter takes a harry potter quiz in the backseat
I feel the unmoored dagger of her “I” so deeply
on this drive, like a prayer I couldn’t finish
before sleep, like electricity humming
in the echoic quiet.
I tend to be wary around new people,
so don’t make friends often,
she whispers to her screen in the tighter
and tighter gravity. She tells me, again,
of the house she’ll have when she grows up:
its mares and mutts and strays;
wind shakes the car and the roadside cattails
like swamp-wands cast invisibility over all of this.
I’ve seen the house of her closing
its Victorian doors and windows:
already she doesn’t want to be seen at school,
covers her shoulders, refuses to smile at praise,
designs avatars to walk in her place. Does it run
in the family, the new doc will soon ask.
We hold hands across the console
as spring begins its piercing return (a moon,
a storm, a trick of cold). Of what material
is your wand’s core? she asks her little deity
over and over after careful silence.
All the bells of wind humming
through her volition like an orchestra
of silver privacy. All the spells
of self settling her future
right here, right now.
Bill Neumire’s first poetry collection, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his second book, #TheNewCrusades, was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, and West Branch. In addition to writing, he also served as an assistant editor for the literary magazine Verdad and as a reviewer for Vallum.
Currently Reading:
Antigolf by John Colasacco
Poems Before & After by Miroslav Holub
Zero at the Bone: 50 Essays Against Despair by Christian Wiman
For More About the Author:
@wjneumire