8.01 / January 2013

Cut Like Me

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_1/Miller.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Baby feet kick her ribs but she still had all of them not like Adam. Her organs busy knitting baby limbs, rows of stitches can’t drop a stitch they must be perfect. Back when she was a little girl her mother folded her wings bought her hoodies sewed into them extraordinary inner wing-shaped pockets, tucked them neatly. As a woman-girl in a dirty bathroom she begged him to make her like everyone else, cut off my wings, cut them off, cut them off. She took a picture to jail them in a frame: bloody wings on grimy tile. Babygirl’s wings flutter-swim inside and grow lacy.


Amanda Hart Miller is presently pursuing a Master of Arts in Writing at Johns Hopkins University, and she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Hagerstown Community College in Maryland.
8.01 / January 2013

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