Summary

Poem 1. First person. “(H)e” asks how it is possible for the speaker to be kind. “milk and honey dripped from my lips” as the speaker reveals it is possible to do so because people have not been kind (11).

Poem 2. First person. The speaker describes being five years old when “the first boy that kissed her” held her down. The speaker suggests the boy behaved similarly to how his father behaved towards his mother, suggesting that the mother and the speaker had similar feelings of emptiness, while the boy and his father both “had the smell of starvation” on their lips (12).

Poem 3. The text for this poem is placed within a drawing of a nude woman, headless and legs spread. Specifically, the text is placed where her vagina would be, and refers to the space between a women’s legs as...