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Jenny Factor Page 2 Atonement
My hands are wide.
My eyes are cold.
My heart is small.
I hoard my change.
I squandered happiness
for truth
but fail to act
on what I know.
I fail to act
on what I know.
I hibernate.
I winter over.
I have no trust
in
stars and snow.
Such milky offerings
come then go.
I hibernate.
I winter-over.
My heart is wide.
My hands are cold.
I hoard my truth.
and hide
my change.
and hunger,
but
I do not go.
Sapphics on Nursing
Distance laid its static on us as mothers
Once we’d passed our rocky first spring
together
Phoning news (“Bad Night!” Poop volcano,”
“Sam woke
five times”), the evenings
We spent lonely pacing the kitchen, hours
We had only howling warm tender bundled
Weights, the phone, each other, and days
we strolled through
Descanso Gardens.
On those paths of fallen, bruised
camellias,
Rolling
shade and stone
under wheels of strollers,
Sleep-deprived, sore-nippled, confused and angry,
Quipping, crying, we
Shifted fussy small boys from tit to
shoulder.
Sometimes I would pick up your tiny
Mitchell,
Gangly small anemone—eager grin, his
Blue eyes darting. Sam
Reared determination, back arched, neck
stretched
Toward his usurped position. On stone
steps, we’d
Change them, trading stories of my best
friend whose
First baby died in
Labor, or your sister who arced milk at
her
Husband. Bought sprout sandwiches, cookies
from con-
Cession, we’d plan on sharing but always
went
Back for seconds. I,
Nursing, watched your son at your dewy
nipple
And your
blond hair beaded in orange sunbeams,
Watched your calves gain shape as months
passed from labor—
I saw this wordless—
And I
knew I loved your grown body fiercely
Not unlike my love for those growing
babies
And the
guilty intimacy of tell-all
Phone calls at midday.
As our
babies started to stand and toddle,
Your hurt marriage healed with your
growing Mitchell.
Month by month our phone-calling dwindled
out. My
Problems continued.
Ah, Janine, time’s passed. There have been
such changes.
Sam starts preschool twice a week this
September.
Sometimes I see boys who I think are
Mitch—I’ll
Have no more babies.
Sometimes I remember Descanso Gardens—
Missing noontimes spent at white plastic
tables,
Telling truths we couldn’t share other
places
To the shrill fugue of
Bird-call, boy-call, soft urgent speech and nursing.
Underneath the clouds that would pass, the
airplanes
In the darting sun of that worn-down April
Our breasts grew firm, the
Pressure drove our speaking. How I wish
I’d known
That baby-season, how without consent,
words, or warning
Milk entered, life claimed all those empty
spaces
In us, between us.
---Originally published in the Copper Canyon Press anthology, The
Poet’s Child (Michael
Wiegers, Ed) in a slightly different form.
© Copyright, 2015,
Jenny Factor. |