solaria

the sand is blistering.

gills  flex down  against the

grain.  a hundred  thousand

or, maybe even ten  million

spoonfuls  of  brown  sugar

fold into the quivering slits.

the  brine-slick  rind spits tears;

saltwater laps in  absent  space.

foam, ebb, foam  —–  a  blister

yawns open  along a sunburned

pectoral. it feels like  a baptism.

chalky  plumes  corkscrew

across  crested  sand. gulls

laugh  like  children,  slice

through  saline air, peer in

the chasm of pleated teeth.

hallelujah! and the shrieks echo.

tiny, knobbled deacons skirt  the

rockpool pulpits. their shells  ––

bonny and blue! gather in prayer 

at the kneading, peppered gullet.

hot  flesh tumbles over the

horizon: their glossy limbs

untangle in the saffron ash.

look! she gasps, and sun–

yolk grazes the dorsal wilt.

angels, day–drunk and fresh from

heaven’s crucible, wade up to the

dark pupil, reflections  sewn  into

the lens. poor fish, the  tide won’t

come in this far, and  she’s  right;

On the 17th of March, I wrote a poem you all know as ‘Ghazal for Daddy’s Girl’. 

As a poet, I forego writing about my own experiences; I’ve never been very good at it. I always end up producing incredibly melodramatic pieces that, for lack of a better term, ‘cringe me out’ terribly. As a result, I’ve come to write mostly about animals, nature, and tragedies separate from my own. Yet for some reason, when I sat to write on the 17th of March, I felt this overwhelming urge to start writing about my dad. I didn’t know what I was setting out to achieve at that point, I just let the words come out as they wished without giving it much thought. I edited it once, and moved on with my life.

Looking back on it, it feels like foreshadowing. Four days later, on the 21st of March, I found out my dad had been cheating on my mum for eighteen months. I felt an anger that I had never felt before wash over me. I didn’t look at the poem again other than to paste it into my university submission portfolio for the semester. At the time of writing this, on the 16th of June, I haven’t spoken to my dad properly for a grand total of eighty seven days.

It is now five days until fathers day. My mum, who is far kinder than myself, keeps asking me if I am certain I don't want to get him a card. The answer has been yes every time. I think a younger me would definitely come to regret this choice, but here and now, at twenty one, I feel confident in the decision. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the poem. Naturally, I opened the document just to stare at it. As a result, I decided that for Father’s day this year I would like to discuss the poem in depth. Contextual factors, creative choices, my process– all of it. 

But, I must first warn you that no topics discussed in this essay are tame. I have had an incredibly hard, complex, and tumultuous relationship with my dad over the years. I have no desire to sugarcoat it, and I think that sort of honesty is the most important accompaniment to any, and all, creative pieces. That being said, if you are sensitive to the idea of prolonged abuse, then I would now urge you to stop reading. Otherwise, read on at your own discretion. 

I think I’d like to begin by quoting something I said to my dad during an argument. When you eventually die, I will only have about five good things to say about you at your funeral. Scathing, I’m aware. Unfortunately, it is true. All of my good memories with my dad are from early childhood, and I have this thing where I refuse to talk about any of them. I fear that once I let someone into these sacred moments, they immediately become impersonal and I would have one less happy moment between just him and myself. Funnily enough, I still chose to include my favourite in the poem. It’s an incredibly simple moment: we were making carrot cake when my mum wasn’t home. I got to lick the spoon.

It was very hard for me to let all of you into that moment, but I’m so glad that I did. As I was writing, it seemed like I was gunning for a poem discussing a father’s love morphing into hatred, or at the very least opening up a conversation about the complexity of father-daughter relationships. I think the moment stood for something incredibly innocent and childlike, but also represented the malleability of what it is to be a child. My dad could tell me the sky was pink and I would’ve believed him, because I loved him dearly. Granted, I hardly saw him as he worked three jobs, but it never dampened that love for him. I missed him terribly when he would travel for fire fighter refresher courses, leave on the weekends to be a club bouncer and work a 9-5 in the week. As I look back on it, I think the inclusion of that moment defines that seemingly unconditional love. It sets a precedent that shatters moments later. Of course, life is far longer than two couplets, but I wanted to encapsulate the feeling of living it. Because when you live it, it truly does come out of nowhere, or starts so small that you’re unable to tell where it began.

Next, I’d like to give you a quote from my dad because it still rattles around in my brain to this day. I wake up happy every day, it’s other people who affect my mood. I heard this phrase all of my childhood. After or during every single argument. As a child, I was willing to accept it was my fault for every argument, and that I had forced my dad into calling me ‘fat’ when I was barely ten, and a plethora of other disgusting names. I would go into school devastated and guilty. He would never apologise. When I reached my teens, however, I began to argue back. Where he had previously been able to berate me without so much as a peep besides ‘sorry, daddy’, I was calling him out. 

It was at this point in my resistance my mum moved out of our house. I don’t blame her; my dad had worn her down over the years, and in a last ditch effort to repair the relationship she decided to give him his own space. Suddenly, I was fourteen with no neutral party in my life. Essentially every day was the same: screaming matches that could, and often did, span over hours, threats, tension. During one of these arguments, I was wedged between my bed and my bookcase. There was a very thin strip of space between them you could just about stand in if you were perfectly straight. My dad was screaming into my face while I was standing in this strip. I couldn’t leave, as he was blocking the way, and he was so close I could feel the outward gush of breath while he was shouting. It’s one of those memories I try not to remember, because I was fourteen years old and terrified. As hard as it is to discuss it, I think I have to; it became the moment I never backed down from an argument again, no matter how bad they got.

I think this is where the ‘terrible face of western feminism’ and ‘less like ‘daddy’ more like ‘girl’’ lines in the poem came from. I don’t think I’ll ever be one hundred percent certain as, like I said, I wrote Daddy’s girl on a whim, in one sitting, and only ever edited it once. But, it seemed as though the moment I began to stand up for myself, become a young woman rather than an easily trampled little girl, my dad’s hatred for me amplified tenfold. I became the abject antithesis of everything he wanted and believed; I no longer allowed him to do and say as he wished, and I had begun separating myself from his belief system. I believe I was the first girl (as I was at the time) in his life to have that face. For a long time, I hated myself for this. I wanted nothing more than for my dad to love me as he once did, but could not find it in myself to let him treat me in such a way. I really hope that concept came across to you all.

Knowing he could no longer win from the psychological standpoint, he began the physical approach. My dad would often break my belongings, usually my phone. My phone was thrown out of the second story window of our house, out of his moving car, smashed in the kitchen while he made me watch. Another time he threw my dvd player down the stairs, threatened to smash my tv in, etc. There are really too many to name. Or he would do very cruel and physically intensive things to me, like leaving me at school with no money to get home so I would have to walk three hours to get home, or leaving me sitting outside of our house in the cold and rain without my keys for hours after school. He would also hit me. The three occasions that stand out most in my mind is when he punched me in the McDonalds Drive Thru half an hour before school started, then when he kicked me so hard in the head he concussed me and I still had to go to school, and finally when I told him I was moving in with my mum for college he attempted pushing me out of his moving car on the motorway. 

At first, I considered talking about these experiences in the poem. As I said, I’m entirely disinterested in sugar coating hard topics. Though I ultimately decided not to. I think if I had done that, it would’ve become one of those melodramatic, cringey pieces I have a habit of writing. Yes they were pivotal for me, and I’m certain similar things happened to so many other girls in situations similar to myself, but by including such a specific example I would’ve dampened the relatability of the piece. Daddy’s Girl is not just for me, but for you. For every daughter that has, and does, and will, suffer at the hands of her father. I am not the only one, I never have been. Similarly, the poem itself is less concerned with action specificity, more about the emotional journey. When I imagine Daddy’s Girl, I imagine her as a scared and confused teenager. She doesn’t fully comprehend what’s happening to her, or why. Only that it is. That she is stepping into a cycle many other women have befallen, realising she was never an exception. 

I suppose writing Daddy’s Girl was the beginning of me ‘reaching peace’ with that fact. I remember finishing, sitting back, and feeling as though I had been hit with this sickening ray of clarity. I think the best way to describe it to you all is like that conversation Adrian has with Rocky before he leaves to fight Drago in Russia. You’ve seen him, you can’t win! She was right: I couldn’t win. I spent over ten years fighting my dad, attempting to move mountains, and I have finally decided to begin the process of letting go. 

I have found the most important part of beginning this process is being honest to myself. While my dad may not be a 6’5”, 245 pound Dolph Lundgren capable of killing with his bare hands, he was the man, the thing, who did everything in his power to make my life miserable. I have realised that while he may hate me, he can only hope to hate me the way in which I have come to hate him.

Thank you all for allowing me to admit that to you.

To everyone who has read Ghazal for Daddy’s girl, thank you. I did not write this poem as the perfectionist and overthinker you know. It was not a difficult poem to write for reasons pertaining to form or technicality, more so that I was writing into such a painful space where so many daughters still reside.

And to you, daughters, know that one day you will become your own. You will exit that space as though you have risen from the dead, and step willingly into a life so big, so bold, and so beautiful the thought will haunt him for years.

Yours truly, 

the moment he took you into his arms for the first time, the stakes

were whittled into the still–soft marrow of your bones, daddy’s girl.

formative years consist of carrot cake oozing grease and buttercream.

you lick the spoon— that job’s specially reserved for a daddy’s girl!

later, when rinsing spanish seasalt from your pink swimsuit with bottled

water, you avoid a headside–slap! but only since you’re daddy’s girl.

it’s uncertain when you became the terrible face of ‘western feminism’,

or when every cross became yours to bear; weren’t you just daddy’s girl?

you grieve the life he fed you from his callous, oil–slick hands. marvel

in a mirror; each day you’re looking less like ‘daddy’ and more like ‘girl’.

so your lungs rattle like broken castanets. you sob just like your wounded

gazelle of a mother. you were always destined to grow out of daddy’s girl,

because your daddy has teeth like a norwegian killer whale, and he sinks them

into your mummy’s humped back weekly. you were never exempt, daddy’s girl.

perhaps one day, in a place between your father and the still–wet centre

I. 

Our brothers are playin’ in the creek just shy of old Mr. Sawyer’s house. If you listen close, you can hear ’em squealin’ like spring piglets; they ain’t yet realised they’s waterbabies. Too busy chasin’ the bluegills up stream, crushin’ frogspawn between tiny toes in alla the excitement.  You should be with ’em, watchin’ the stag beetles mosey on through the mildew. Sun’s playin’ hopscotch on yer body, workin’ creek-spray outta yer dress. Still, a couple tiny droplets race from yer bent knees down yer thighs. Farmboys workin’ Mr. Sawyer’s fields whoop an’ holler, try stealin’ a look at the way yer white cotton panties cling on yer hip bones. Pay ’em no mind; a ripple of liver-spotted green goes creepin’ through the chaos. Then it happens: a ray bounces offa the water  jus’ right, an’ the pike’s scales throw a prism over the slick rocks. You fancy that a nicer view then any set’a spread legs.

II. 

‘Cept Mama ain’t lettin’ you, not after you sliced yer foot up on that rock. Says, the creek ain’t no place fer a young lady! Instead, yer layin’ beneath the sycamore, branches splittin’ shadows across yer skin. Couple’a rays come slinkin’ between the leaves to kiss yer cheeks. Feels nice, don’t it? Looks like the parakeets are enjoyin’ it, too. Blue banded tails flutterin’ inside the late mornin’ shine, hurlin’ loose green feathers into the breeze. Far as you know, they’s been nestin’ here since Daddy was a boy. Once, you asked how they got here. Mama told you they’s varmints, always been here an’ always will be. But that ain’t the case; the Mayor released a breedin’ pair on accident, sent Adam an’ Eve Sswoopin’ into our garden like it’s some kinda Eden.  Seems they like that version better than Mama’s, cause a pea-coloured tuft comes floatin’ down. Fer a moment, it’s arcin’ an’ coilin’ round nothin. Finally, it settles on yer chest. A smile splits yer face. Seems you like it too.

III.

You ain’t to go hatin’ Mama fer it, though; the chicken feed has ’em swarmin’ her like locusts. Must think they’s hens too, ’cause they’s nosedivin’ straight outta the sycamore toward the grain. Gleams like wheatbacks strewn in the dirt, don’t it. Yer gigglin’ ’cause Mama looks like she’s square-dancin’ tryin’ to scare ’em off without startlin’ the girls. Skirt ripplin’ round her ankles, shoutin’ shoo!, an’ go on, git y’filthy varmints! ’fore her ankle goes west an’ –– there she goes! Better wipe that grin offa yer face quick, Shug; if she sees you laughin’ at her, she’s gon’ raise snakes. Quick, quick! She’s comin’.  You bow yer head, curls fallin’ in a blonde wave over yer face. Mama’s lips are quiverin’, pale pearls’a spit frothin’ in the corner. Seat’a her dress is dark with dew, spattered with soil an’ blades’a grass. Cast iron starts clangin’ an’ wobblin’ in the kitchen. Don’t go worryin’, she’ll settle to simmer.  But listen, if yer quiet enough that apple pie coolin’ on the ‘sill’s good as ours... There’s a silly twinkle in yer eye when you start slinkin’ over.

IV. 

’Cause Mama makes ’em best. Latticed butter-crusts raisin’ up like sunflowers in June, scent’a cinnamon waftin’ so far even the rancher’s boys can smell it. We’s got the best smellin’ ’sill fer miles, everyone says so. Sometimes, she’ll sell a slice to the Sunday School nippers fer a wheatie. Ain’t much, but she’s savin’ fer one of them new skillets. Yer belly’s fulla spices an’ gooey apple slices by the time Daddy comes trudgin’ up the path. The boys are on his tail, soaked an’ fulla mud arguin’ ’bout how big that trout they’s seen today was. It was this big! No, it was this big! while Daddy’s takin’ off his hat to shoo away the lightnin’ bugs. He’s jus’ settin’ ’em straight; they’s flecks’a sun stayin’ up past bedtime. Then he’s herdin’ us inside. Minute he’s through the door, spurs clunkin’ an’ chafin’ the varnish, Mama’s pokin’ her head outta the kitchen. Yer trekkin’ mud all over the damn place. Boys never learn, Shug, ’cause instead’a apologisin’, Daddy goes goddamnit woman, quit yer bellyachin’! Mama blinks. The hell did you jus’ say to me? You figure he ain’t gonna be fond’a them apples.

V.

Yer right; the arguin’ don’t stop fer what seems like years. Mama’s threatenin’ Daddy with the doghouse, an’ yer scared that means you ain’t gettin’ no kiss goodnight. You ain’t never been fond’a the dark, so we’s both sittin’ in yer room countin’ the stars.  At some point, you see an opossum passin’ through. Six babies are hangin’ offa her back, writhin’ over one another like snakes tryin’ to get the best spot’a fur. A bee starts buzzin’ in yer bonnet ‘cause you perk up, say you wanna have that many babies with the McKinley’s boy from down Dewberry Lane. Don’t matter he ain’t got no Pa. Gotta keep that to yerself, Shug, unless you want Daddy takin’ his shotgun offa the wall an’ pumpin’ that boy fulla buckshot. But ’s all you wanna talk about, all y’are talkin’ about ’till yer slumped over with yer head in my lap.  So much fer that goodnight kiss, huh? Outside, the crickets are chirpin’ away, and a couple’a moths flutter ’round yer window. Don’t go worryin’ about ’em in yer dreams; Mama’s stopped givin’ Daddy hell. Once he knows the boys are settled in some sorta puppy pile, he’ll come give you that kiss an’ pull the curtains. You ain’t the type to stir, so when he picks you up real slow, yer head jus’ lulls into his chest fer a second. Look jus’ as sweet as you did when he held you fer the first time. I pull back yer sheets, an’ he settles you in nice, goes tuckin’ a couple baby curls away ’fore he slides Flopsy in under yer arm. C’mon now, Junebug. I ain’t sure why we’s creepin’ out, or why I’m closin’ the door real slow ’cause you could sleep through a twister. Ain’t got time to think on it though, ‘cause it’s my turn now: g’night honey, kiss on the head, then everythin’s Squiet.  ‘Fore I lay down, I close my eyes real tight, and listen real hard. Fer a moment, there ain’t nothin but the sound’a critters settlin’ fer the night. But then I hear it: that crisp wind whistlin’ through the sycamore. Now, I ain’t sentimental, but I start wonderin’…

VI.

You was four, when we started callin you Magpie.

Was a Sunday in 1954, an’ the chapel stunk like smoked oranges. Mama had you in yer best, a new pink frock with one’a them crin slips. I remember you lookin’ like a tiny, still buddin’ magnolia Mama’d pinned on her hip. Had folk jus’ about swarmin’ her to steal a look. Pretty as a petal, some feller’d said.

Good thing they did; all Saturday Mama had that crin soakin’ in her favourite enamel pot. Bright, sunflower yellow in the middle that caramelised toward the edges. Took hours, hours, fer the crin to take an’ stiffen up. Sun was jus’ about settin’ when she fished it outta the pot an’ hung it to dry over an open umbrella. Reminds me of goin’ out dancin’ with yer daddy, alla this work, she’d said, but there sure as hell ain’t nothin’ better than a fresh petticoat. Then she fixed the red kerchief tied round her head, an’ went back to cookin’ dinner. Think she would’a raised snakes ’f they didn’t notice after alla that.

Course, you didn’t care you put every other Sunday school nipper to shame. All you did was ache yer tiny belly sayin’ how itchy it were. Didn’t matter, though, jus’ made ’em all the fonder of you. I remember the Pastor’s wife pinchin’ yer cheeks till they looked sunburnt, sayin’ oh! She's gon’ be the finest belle fer miles. Mama agreed, and they laughed like they was only girls themselves.

That put Mama in one’a the sweetest moods. When we was leavin’, she looked at me with a smile so bright it put sunshine to shame. Could hear the life in her when she said, fancy helpin’ yer ol’ lady make a cobbler when we’s home? Deep down, I knew she jus’ wanted to use that pot again, but I weren’t complainin’ about bakin’ instead’a Sunday chores. 

That day, the walk home didn’t feel so tirin’ no more.

At home, Mama let you go play on the rope swing by the sycamore. Daddy’d finished makin’ it fer you a couple days ago, but only after hearin’ you beg fer round about a month of Sundays. Somethin’ about Irene’s daddy makin’ her one so you needed one. Last I saw, you was havin’ the time of yer life.

We started by choppin’ up the dewberries I’d taken you pickin’ a couple days earlier. Diced ’em real fine then sucked the juice offa my fingers when Mama weren’t lookin’. Maybe me an’ you weren't so different afterall, huh?

Then, I tipped ’em into the sunflower pot. Brought ’em to that soft, rollin’ boil an– my God. Whole ranch smelled so bright, so tart, my mouth couldn’t help start waterin’. Guess that happens every time though; we ain’t never made a bad pie. In fact, Mama always hadta make round about four since the ranchers boys’d come by beggin fer a slice. ’S how she saved up fer her pot in the first place, y’see. Two-bit a slice and a year’s worth’a patience goes a long way. Today weren’t no different; Mama’d set her eyes on one’a them fancy new skillets. 

Anyways, she’d had me butterin’ all four of her aluminium pie tins, wonderin’ whether our sill looked better with all four latticed butter crusts oozin’ dewberry, or glimmerin’ with tiny two-bit steppin stones ’fore she started shoutin’. Damn near blew out my ear drums, I recognised what she was sayin’.

Goddamnit, Margaret! Get outta the pig pen!

And there you was, sight enough to gag a maggot: head to toe in wallow, not a slither of pink in sight. Nellie was snufflin’ round yer ankles, and when she brought her head up, she snorted a fresh coat of wallow onto the seat’a yer dress.

Nellie! You giggled like a tinglin’ windchime. Almost had me smilin’ ’fore Mama slammed down her rollin’ pin. I guess Nellie didn’t look like much more than a poundage of pork an’ lard that weren’t even worth bein’ stunned at the time, cause I could see her lips shudderin’ like the sunflower pot’s lid. Thank God Daddy’d left the sledgehammer down at the barn.

Next time I looked, you was climbin’ up onto the fence fer purchase. Y’leaned forwards, words whistlin’ through the gap yer front baby tooth’d left.

Mama, look! A wheatie!

I remember squintin’ real hard. You certainly was holdin’ a wheatback; could jus’ about see them wheat stems sproutin’ from Lincoln’s steel back like wings. I tried not laughin’, honest to God I did. Only stopped when Mama smacked me upside the head. I squared myself away real quick.

Beau, Mama spoke slow, like she was pickin’ her words carefully, go get yer magpie of a sister outta the pig pen.

I did as I was told. Walked straight outta that front door without darin’ to look back, hollered somethin’ along the lines of alright now, missy, c’mere. Y’gave Nellie one last scritch behind one’a her floppy, pink ears an’ hopped outta the sty. Next thing I knew, I had a whirlwind’a pink an’ mud jumpin’ straight into me, arms slingin’ round my neck. May as well’ve been a pig yerself.

Look, an’ you was already pushin’ that wheatback straight into my face, says nine–teen forty four!

I managed to shift some’a the wallow away with my thumb. Sure as sin, you’d found a forty four steel in our sty. 

I’m gon’ give it to Mama to sell, you said, snatchin’ it back offa me. Then, you hacked a wad’a saliva into yer mouth. Spat it straight onto the penny’s surface to shine it off on yer frock. ’Fore I could say that didn’t do much fer cleanin’, you was talkin’ again.

Then she can make more pies. An’ buy me a new rockin’ horse.

I laughed. Some full, bright kinda thing I didn’t know I had in me.