Photo by Christian Langballe
Daughter, Daughter
Katherine Beam
They are vicious, these children
Raised with wolves’ teeth and feathers,
Sharp as blades, sharp as pain,
Hidden beneath those duck down curls
Maybe there are oceans in the eye
But there is doomsday on the tongue
And that girl, she breathes like hemlock.
Death awaits only the sleeping here,
Passing by those lying awake in moonlight.
Those who are dead already don’t sate
The kind of titan hunger that drives
These children to eat their mothers
And swallow, whole, the seas.
Katherine Beam
They are vicious, these children
Raised with wolves’ teeth and feathers,
Sharp as blades, sharp as pain,
Hidden beneath those duck down curls
Maybe there are oceans in the eye
But there is doomsday on the tongue
And that girl, she breathes like hemlock.
Death awaits only the sleeping here,
Passing by those lying awake in moonlight.
Those who are dead already don’t sate
The kind of titan hunger that drives
These children to eat their mothers
And swallow, whole, the seas.