Dusting By Louis Jenkins

The poem “Dusting” portrays a young girl who leaves marks on the dusty objects in her house but ends up being wiped away by her mother. The word “dusting” from the title means to dust off the furniture in the house but in this case it means that the young girl wants to be different from her mother. She wants to erase the accomplishments her mother has achieved and accomplish her own different things. She says, “But I refused with every mark to be like her, anonymous.” which indicates her thoughts on her mother’s achievements. She believes that her mother has achieved what other people normally achieve, almost as if she was calling her mother’s achievements meaningless. The second stanza of the poem discusses the opposing things that both the