Madison 2, or A New Poem That Has Come Out of Nats

Guidebook for My Daughter

Don't be afraid to cook extravagant meals on nights when you're home alone.
Feel safe when you see spiders, for they are your kin.
Always use more hot sauce than anyone else at the table.
Push your voice to its farthest depths and hold it there until it stops struggling.
Smoke gas station cigarettes.
Paint a picture of who you want to be at eighty years old. Now draw a halo over it.
Wear boys' underwear and roll your button-downs past your elbows.
Reclaim Mozart and Mendelssohn, for they too are your kin.
Forgive your mama, for she knows not what she does. Tell her you will still brush her hair at night when you come back to visit.

Learn to find the pockets of home in foreign tongues.
Sing hymns like spiderwebs and bequeath them to star-laced hurricanes.
Don't hide when the lightning strikes.
Walk through the forests like barefoot thunder;
call on your grandmothers before you plead with their gods.
Test the limits of your skin
with safety pins and too much sunshine.

Fuck on your own terms, even if that means
you have to seduce him,
learn the weak places on every human body just in case,
let your body dictate boundaries like a heel
dragging through dirt to make a finish line and tell him:
this is where you stop.
Learn to speak eyebrows and fingertips,
use questions like chisels.
Carve those around you until you fit.
Stand on two feet when you kiss
your first lover so you can catch her
when she falls for you. Because you,
my daughter, you are irresistible.