Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.
The ending of "How to Triumph Like a Girl" epitomizes the unbridled feminist energy of this poem, and much of Limón's writing. It begins with a mildly sexual tease, inviting the audience to imagine lifting her shirt, but it is not for a sexual reason. Instead, the speaker wants us to witness her feminine greatness and power. The speaker compares her own heart to a horse's, imagining a giant horse-heart inside her own body. The phrase "huge beating genius machine" stands out in the poem because it fuses the organic (beating) with mechanical (machine), and physical power (huge) with intellectual power (genius). The speaker, with her female horse aura, grows to encompass all of these aspects of power in herself. The poem ends with the cocky, arrogant assertion that she "knows" she will win. The poem stands out in contrast to many of Limón's darker, more melancholy and uncertain poems, and is a valuable counterpoint of unabashed, boastful pride.
Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty.
"Instructions on Not Giving Up" is highly concrete, grounded in very tangible images of spring trees, except for these lines. The "strange idea of continuous living" and "the mess of us, the hurt, the empty" stand out for being vague, abstract concepts, but they perform a crucial function. Until these lines, the poem focuses on the speaker herself observing the trees. These lines broaden the metaphor of regrowth to include "us," invoking the poem's readers and indeed humanity as a whole. These images are left broad and abstract in recognition of the fact that though each person's "winter" (i.e., trauma and hardship) is unique, we each have the ability to heal from it.
Reader, I want to
say: Don't die.
This short sentence marks a pivotal turn in "The Leash," the first of two times the phrase "Don't die" is repeated in the poem as a direct command. (The second time, it's more ambiguous whether the address is to the reader or to Limón's dog, or, as is likely, both). The bold, commanding word choice reminds the reader that survival is often a choice: we have a responsibility to resist the despair and anxiety with which the speaker of the poem wrestles. It is a dark poem, and the speaker does not sugarcoat the tragedies that fill the world, but she draws this line as a hard minimum: at the very least, stay alive. By making the bold choice to break the fourth wall and use the word "reader," Limón makes it clear that we should pay attention.
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We've come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
Similar to the "Reader" in "The Leash," the word "Look" jumps off the page to demand the audience's attention. And like the lines from "Instructions" quoted above, these lines rely on big, abstract concepts: surviving more, loving harder. The interesting word "unspectacular" uses understatement to shift from a tone of humility and self-deprecation, which characterizes the beginning of the poem with its trash bins and forgetfulness, to the tone of greatness and ambition that ends the poem. Moreover, by posing a question to the reader, Limón once again invites us directly into the thought process of the poem with her.
the one who
doesn't want to be diminished
by how much she wants to be yours.
Ada Limón's nuanced feminism is shown in these lines that end "Wife." Referring to herself in the third person, the speaker of the poem has been wrestling for several lines with how she can fit into the idea of "wifehood" given that she is so prone to sadness, melancholy, solitude, and restlessness. She strongly resists the patriarchal ideas of women as submissive, emotionless servants, but these final lines add an important twist by refocusing the poem on her love for her husband. The speaker doesn't want to be "diminished"—that is, made smaller or lesser—by how much she wants to be her a wife to her husband. She is asking him—and by extension, us as readers—to acknowledge that complexity.
I am asking you to touch me.
Limón excels at punchy ending lines, and this one may take the prize. This line is a direct and poignant plea for human contact amidst a highly pandemic-influenced book (The Hurting Kind). It gains much of its power from the fact that the poem is all one run-on sentence, accumulating a kind of runaway train-like energy that crashes suddenly into this line, which is also the shortest line of the poem. It's as if the speaker's wild train of thought has finally cleared, or condensed down to this one vital need. The "you" here is powerfully ambiguous: like "Triumph," it could be the general audience; like "Wife," it could be her husband. "The End of Poetry" is one of Limón's least narrative poems, and thus provides little context to help us guess. As a result, readers can interpret it in the ways that resonate most with them. It is human contact that Limón offers as an answer to burnout and despair: whether that means intimate partnership, eroticism, platonic affection, or something else is left open.
