For Margaret

Any little bud of a baby knows
if it’s a girl or not. Forget me, Daisy.
My black-eyed baby, my pearl,
my dreamed-of daughter,
sweet incarnation of butter
and desert stars, blue asteroid
climbing a chocolate sky, go rise
in someone else’s east for a while.
Forgive me the crown, the chain.
Go be the sun for someone
who doesn’t need one.

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Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.