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Today’s poem employs an image worthy of Homer to touch the stark reality of a mother’s intuition. Happy reading.
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The Daily Poem — Rhina P. Espaillat’s “Butchering”. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson and today is Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. Today's poem is by Reena PS Bayot and it's called Butchering. I'll read it once, offer a few comments and read it one more time. Butchering. My mother's mother, toughened by the farm, hardened by infants' burials, used a knife and swung an axe as if her woman's arm wielded a man's hardwill, inured to life and death alike. What ails you now, she'd say urgently to the sick. She fed them too, roughly but well, and took the blood away and washed the dead if there was that to do. She told us children how the cows could sense when their own calves were marked for Butchering and how they load their wordless eloquence impossible to still with anything, sweet clover
or her unremitting care. She told it simply, but she faltered there. I feel like this poem is a very typical Reena PS Bayot poem. She has such a gift for creating these limited but very vivid portraits of women, especially women who have known hardship and this poem about her grandmother's no exception. We meet this tough and business like woman hardworking, wielding a man's hardwill, but we also discover it in the second line that she was not born in this way. She was toughened by the work that her life required and hardened by loss and sorrow, toughened by the farm, hardened by infants' burials. And at the end of the description of this woman who is caring but hard, we get this beautiful,
unspoken explanation for her hardness and maybe also a glimpse beneath it. S. Bayot is so careful not to force the image but its implication is clear and nonetheless. She doesn't say she was like the cow that could sense when its own calves were marked for Butchering. There's no direct connection drawn between the grandmother and the cow except for proximity within this poem. It's just like this cow knows that its calves are marked for suffering so this grandmother who has herself suffered greatly knows can sense that her own children and grandchildren might be marked for the same kinds of suffering and it's offered at the end of the poem as a kind of interpretive key to this person and acts as an invitation to read it again. But here's our poem one more time butchering.
My mother's mother toughened by the farm, hardened by infants' burials, used a knife and swung an axe as if her woman's arm wielded a man's hard will, enured to life and death alike, but ails you now, she'd say urgently to the sick. She fed them to roughly but well and took the blood away and washed the dead if there was that to do. Told us children how the cows could sense when their own calves were marked for Butchering and how they load their wordless eloquence impossible to still with anything sweet clover or her unremitting care. She told it simply but she faltered there. This has been The Daily Poem. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with more poetry for you. Till then, find us at dailypoempod.substac.com to listen to all of our past
episodes or to subscribe and support the show. For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.
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