Summary

The speaker begins with a command to the absent "Daddy" of the title. “You do not do / Anymore” (1-2), she says, calling him “black shoe” (2) that has enclosed the speaker as though she were a foot. She had been so obediently quiet inside the shoe that she was reluctant to breathe or sneeze.

The speaker begins the next stanza addressing “Daddy” (6), stating she has had to kill him, even though he died before she had the chance to do so. She describes him as a vast marble statue, suffused with divine power but also “ghastly” (9), with a gray toe as big as a San Francisco seal. The speaker says the head of this statue has fallen in the Atlantic Ocean, into the blue-green waters of Cape Cod. This means the statue must have spanned the entire continent, from California to Massachusetts. She says she...