Where I have long since stripped myself of daughter and burned her for warmth.
Here the whole sky is my chimney. Here the whole sky is not enough.
My mother is driftwood. Doesn’t startle the water with her paddling.
An effort she has not learned how to hold. Her love is gaseous a fog hovering around her and not me.
She coos a song I offer to make of her body shape of leaving a love that will not sink.
Donna Gary Donna Gary is an African American femme queer poet who calls Chicago home. At NYU Gallatin her concentration is Poetics of Embodiment: The Ways Marginalized Folks Re-Imagine Their Value with a minor in Disability Studies. She is a space manager at New Women Space. She has performed on competitive slam teams for the Goodman Theatre and NYU Slam! Poetry Team. She has shared her poetry on stages such as The Metro, NYU Skirball, and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her poetry has been published in Dawn With Arms Full of Roses, A Queer Anthology,and The Rational Creature.
