I am collaborating with this artist Jen Smith. She is creating three drawings based on my Let my girl out poem. The title was 1973, and I had posted it a few months ago, but I am reposting it with one of Jen’s drawings.

I let my girl out-
She rose like a lion
From behind a great rock-
Mad as hell
At the adult in me.

She pulled down her knickers,
“I ain’t afraid of no snakes.”
Made ribbons in her hair
Of grass and flowers.
Tore her Gingham dress,
Fine shreds of printed fabric
Dropping from her shoulders,
Like water on a ducks back,
Till she was thin bare.

Naked she climbed
The blue oak
and swung out from sturdy
branches
Yipping and yeehawing
Till she plopped into the
Lake.

Climbing out
Of green mud,
Tendrils of clumped
flowers and grass,
mashed dreaded locks,
like a rasta child.
Her teeth glared white
Laughing,
Belly flop,
Into the dark
Pool of water.

She was an animal.
A Beast-
To the very core,

And I wept
For forgetting her.