Hunter’s Daughter
MANDA FREDERICK
Child, pay attention
because one day you will need to know:
if open thighs were snares,
pale twists of hollow milkweed noosed
from hip to heel, you may just
catch him (in the act), because
even a naked snare will choke the air
around whatever lays too close.
But thighs are not snares
and at the heart of every trap is this:
a depressed trigger,
a masked human scent,
a treacherous space that closes faster
than a hand over a mouth.
Manda Frederick has previously published poetry in the Sierra Nevada Review, Stirring, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Monarch Review, Muse & Stone, The Way North: Upper Peninsula Collected New Works, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, the 2011 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, The Cancer Poetry Project Anthology, Love Notes: An Anthology of Romantic Poetry, MOTIF Anthology: Water, and the Delmara Review. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers and an MA in literary theory from Western Washington University. Manda currently resides in Philadelphia PA, where she serves as the Managing Editor for a book-publishing company in the tech industry.