Fist of Daffodils

To say he hit her,
my mother, over the head
with a ripe plum or

a pomegranate
would be lying, but it was
red, that volleyball.

On the blooming field,
he struck her down with a spike
and when she fell, he

ran up to meet her—
chivalry intact. He pulled
from the ground a sweet

fist of daffodils,
and unearthed his best excuse:
“just to talk” to her.

Danny Duffy has worked as a proofreader, an editorial assistant, and a writer-in-residence at an art museum. He earned his MFA in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches creative writing. He has received scholarships from the Community of Writers and the North Street Collective. His poetry and criticism appear in The Times Literary Supplement, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Rust and Moth, Frontier, and elsewhere. He reads for The Nashville Review.