I always wanted a daughter, which isto say, I wanted a better self,flicked from my marrow—madeflesh. I wanted this bone-of-my-bonesto move in the world, exceptionaland unharmed. Not this world. But a worldalmost exactly unlike it. Samepaved streets and street cafés, same slowunfurl of spring. Only, in that world,the green of field and orchard is still wantonwith winged things, their bellies powderedwith the flowers’ gold dust.Daughter, I say, and I mean a listof what-ifs, a cacophony of sorrows.I imagine her tall, lithe as willows.When I say Daughter,I mean a match, ready to strike herselfagainst the world that isn’tthis one. I mean luck. I mean a riverempty of drowning. I mean an arrowaimed at an unnamed star. Someoneonce said a daughter is a needle in the heart.I would take that needle, sew her a dressof yarrow and blood.In the world not this one,I have a daughter. She is a long braid,a memory of fire. She goes before me,shining darkly, into a city—of gold, of salt—that I will never see.
Daughter
Feature Date
- May 25, 2025
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“Daughter” from BLADE BY BLADE: by Danusha Laméris.
Published by Copper Canyon Press on October 22, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Danusha Laméris.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Mark Stover
Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Danusha is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was honored by the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem Small Kindnesses has been translated to multiple languages, quoted in O Magazine, turned into a short film, and was recently read by actress Helena Bonham Carter. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her third and newest collection, Blade by Blade (2024) is now available through Copper Canyon Press. Danusha is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program.
“Blade by Blade by Danusha Laméris refuses grief as isolated by either time or place, with grace and thunder. The losses of both a brother and a son, two men remembered well, lead to winding and repeated meetings of earth and self. With the observation of Richard Powers and the casual brilliance of Gwendolyn Brooks, the book angles toward each and every subject and environment equally. The calmness with which the speaker catalogs what is gone due to environmental catastrophe and suicide provides a wide lens—not with distance, but specificity. The admirable volume brings on a new style for Laméris, making her poems utterly recognizable.”
—Poetry Northwest
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