Which Girl Am I?
by JoAnne Growney
The girl who’s not forced to divide
into the good girl and the real one
is a lucky one. I was eleven
when I felt a crack begin.
took on two heads, two faces,
two cuts of hair. Mock feelings
serve as well as true ones,
I told myself — but buried parts
still surface like cicadas in their year.
Long division is difficult
and plagued with remainders.
A girl with two heads
is like a bird with one wing.
Note: This poem came out of a
cooperative ekphrastic venture with Silver Spring sculptor, Mark Behme – he bravely lent me his sculpture "Split Tales” and, living with it, I discovered its connection to
mathematics – and the poem. The poem was
first published in “Intersections:
Poetry with Mathematics” in 2014
Since childhood JoAnne Growney has loved poetry and
found some time for enjoying it during lots of years of studying and teaching
mathematics. Both her childhood and her
teaching took place in Pennsylvania but in 2005 she relocated to Silver Spring,
MD to be near family, especially her grandchildren. A lot of her poems, relate to mathematics.
She also has a blog, “Intersections:
Poetry with Mathematics” at https://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com.
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