Patricia
McMillen
Dark Night
O sharp-edged poem,
square-headed,
unrepentant: in giving birth to you
I sustain further damage.
In bearing you, awkward, malformed
lines, my unhappy womb
stretches into ever more grotesque
shapes; the edges of my mouth
rip and bleed.
You emerge at the wrong time
and place: back seat of a taxicab,
deserted cornfield in the dead
of winter. Uncalled, uncalled-for
child disowned by your father,
you leave me bloody,
cracked and resewn. Yet you
are all the child I’ll ever
have;
grateful, I press your hard mouth
to my breast. |