My daughter plays on the floor
　　with plastic letters,
　　red, blue & hard yellow,
　　learning how to spell,
　　spelling,
　　how to make spells.
　　
　　I wonder how many women
　　denied themselves daughters,
　　closed themselves in rooms,
　　drew the curtains
　　so they could mainline words.
　　
　　A child is not a poem,
　　a poem is not a child.
　　there is no either/or.
　　However.
　　
　　I return to the story
　　of the woman caught in the war
　　& in labour, her thighs tied
　　together by the enemy
　　so she could not give birth.
　　
　　Ancestress: the burning witch,
　　her mouth covered by leather
　　to strangle words.
　　
　　A word after a word
　　after a word is power.
　　
　　At the point where language falls away
　　from the hot bones, at the point
　　where the rock breaks open and darkness
　　flows out of it like blood, at
　　the melting point of granite
　　when the bones know
　　they are hollow & the word
　　splits & doubles & speaks
　　the truth & the body
　　itself becomes a mouth.
　　
　　This is a metaphor.
　　
　　How do you learn to spell?
　　Blood, sky & the sun,
　　your own name first,
　　your first naming, your first name,
　　your first word.