by Dayna Patterson
I like the way you bent over to shake your breasts
into your bra, the way you showed
Mom how to do it, the way she
showed me.
And I’ve learned its comfort,
swells settled in their
cloth cups
with the help of shimmy and gravity.
I wonder if your mother
showed you
and her mother
showed her, this lacy,
intimate knowledge
from one Eve to another,
mother to daughter,
mitochondrial.
How to girl into woman.
How to gather oneself.
Dayna Patterson makes her home in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her MFA from Western Washington University, where she served as the managing editor of Bellingham Review. She is the poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine and the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. daynapatterson.com
Hawaii Pacific Review 