BY DAYNA PATTERSON
Daughter is caddis encased in a purse of silk and
sand, shiny flecks of mica to fright the fish and
birds who’d surely crush her sclerotized shell.
Daughter is cactus hiding water in a fluted stem,
having exchanged soft leaves for spines, her
flowers dormant. Daughter is cat hiss, spray of
piss and needle teeth, claws raked across flesh,
drawing blood. Daughter is catfish feeding at the
lake’s muddy bottom, her boyfriend all suction
mouth and slick whisker. Daughter is calf buss,
awkward kiss, knocking too big teeth against your
face, bruising cheek. Daughter is chalice of red
wine blessed. She doesn’t know how holy. Daughter is
Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Her creative work has appeared recently in The Carolina Quarterly, Passages North, and Whale Road Review. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry. She was a co-winner of the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. daynapatterson.com
Process Note: "Daughter, Becoming" is scaffolded by two rhetorical structures: anaphora, the repetition of "Daughter is," and consecution, which occurs when the sounds in one word subtly morph into a new word, still echoing the original word. I began with "caddis," which then transforms into "cactus," "cat hiss," "catfish," "calf buss," and finally arrives at "chalice." Or, it arrives at that blank space at the end, the What's next? of the poem/daughter.