Daughter Alone

I am bruised
by her enthusiasm;
roughhousing afternoons
that begin with thumb wrestling,
her thumbs already longer than mine,
then to tickling, judo, kick boxing
and finally my death by suffocation,
her laughter muffled by the pillow
across my cauliflower ear.
I cannot give her four walls,
a walk-to-school childhood,
or a June Cleaver mother,
and I refuse her
a father sparring partner,
so I pay each Saturday
offering fair flesh to pummeling.
Ten rounds, winner take all.

^

Biography

A lifelong native of Albuquerque New Mexico, which is in the desert southwest of the United States, Cathy Calkins frequently uses the beauty of the New Mexican landscape in her traditional haiku. A nurse, with 16 years of working in intensive care nurseries, she also has a degree in secondary education. She writes both free verse and haiku. She began writing as a teenager, and has been influenced by the works of Billy Collins, Mike Zweigbaum, Galway Kinnell, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Ray Bradbury, Charles de Lint, William Shakespeare, Robert Heinlein and Michael Herr. Music has also influenced her writing, including Janis Ian, Eric Clapton, The Doors, Lennon and McCartney and Carole King. She has previously been published in Electric Acorn, and has had two poems accepted for publication next year in Agnieszka's Dowry. She participates in an online group WordSong