"Who are the other mammals full of feathers / who miss their harsh / fathers like I do"

my poem sees the light today

May you see your work come to fruition and be received. May you be granted the right to speak. May your voice carry.

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Dearest Readers,

This is a special day for me ~ a day I get to speak in verse.

My new poem, “Who,” is featured as the Poem-a-Day on the Academy of American Poets website. It’s going out to their 300,000 email subscribers.

There was a time that this exposure would have had me quaking in illogical terror.

Now, I feel only joy. Thanks for being here with me. Here’s the poem.

Who

by Abe Louise Young

Who are the other mammals
full of feathers
who miss their harsh
fathers like I do,

who collect leather pipes
& hoop dresses like I do,
who send their mothers
supermarket rose bouquets,

who prefer their bodies
ringed round with zippers?
Where are the other
animals that wallow

in purple fringed regret
like I do?
Who are the other mammals
with cloven cracked

chests who stitch
sharp darts
in their flesh like I do?
O, isn’t it a hopeless

loneliness of kitchens
when you don’t know
anyone
to give your everything to?

Copyright © 2025 by Abe Louise Young. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 11, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

Sitting in the physical ache of longing, I just tried to write the most vulnerable poem that I could. That evening, a friend and I had just delivered twenty flip phones to people living in a homeless camp that was about to be demolished. No one there had a phone. The hope was that connection and community could somehow change the trajectory of the loss. After the rainy night delivery, I went home. I smelled wood smoke on my clothes and cooked a pot of soup in my kitchen. I wanted to fill more bowls than my own.

Art: Ellen Harding Baker's “Solar System” Quilt (1876–ca. 1883), Public Domain