Featured Poem

By Dawn Marar

My daughter says, “Reveal yourself, your true ID,”
as I drink wine and write and she chopchopssizzz.

In the kitchen, I was never more than a Martha Stewart clone
clutching my ’70s Betty Crocker gold-tone statuette—

an award for sewing a wrap dress for my sister.
In the attic now, Betty holds the laurel high above her head.

At my request, daughter tosses words while pare-scrape-
slicing. Like a golfer shouting “Fore!”

she cries, “Corn!” And up pops
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.

It’s harvest time, after all.
But wait! Corn-crackin’ Jimmy?

I—who bursts into song at the slightest provocation—
bite my tongue. Rising from a ’50s childhood

(not Eminem’s 2007 rap song),
My master’s gone away.

How shall I harvest that?
As a child, I didn’t think about what it meant

but it could have meant only one thing:
slave master. I must’ve known.

We all must’ve known. All of us, white
kids in the all-white school in the all-white village

in upstate New York, where I grew up.
Daughter pitches, “Elmer Fudd and plastic surgery.”

(Where does this girl get her ideas?)
But it’s no laughing matter.

Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet.
Plastic surgery’s no cover.

Like Elmer Fudd, I sport scant melanin.
This is the moment, in the pwogwam folks,

where, tempted to flush it—or think I can—
the ole system backs up

and I have to face the fact
the master’s not gone away.

You can access previous featured poems in our Archive.

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