print previewback REBECCA BLACK
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My hand slipped
the surgeon said
but I promise
I wasn’t drunk.
I hated him.
I was so grateful
for the C-section
sideways scar,
and the one
under it.
~
To throw off the body
of the father
and mother
we pretend
we didn’t come
from anywhere.
Travel, for me,
is the outside
and the inside
aligned.
I am a stranger
and finally
everyone
knows it.
~
When you arrived
in Belfast
you saw no further
than my body.
I woke up
at all hours
to the idea
of form,
to the squalling
of your form.
No exile from
childhood no
nostalgia no
longing for home.
I couldn’t hate
anymore
what I made
from my own material.
~
Those years
fallen away
like the eggs
of the children
I wasn’t having
while caring for
my father.
Now I take
the baby’s foot
in my mouth,
spit out seven
tiny moons.
~
You who did not
ask to be born,
who live
at our mercy—
you owe us
nothing.
~
Your mother
nursed you
when you were
a baby too,
my father says.
You should
forgive her.
I look at him.
It’s not
a question
of forgiveness,
I say.
~
They said I
would
understand
my parents
when I had
a child
of my own.
And I did.
But I was
appalled
by what
I understood.
~
Standing in front
of Dubuffet’s Belfast
Mother
and Child—
in the primitive
scratches,
I see the admiration
of the father,
his jealousy
as he watches
his child
being nursed.
~
I would give
all this—
the careful lines,
the images
positioned just so—
to have a mother
whose biochemistry,
whose dopamine
receptors allowed her
to cherish me.
~
If I die
now,
someone
will always
think of me.
I must
be more careful
crossing the street.
~
The last time I was
in Rome
standing in front
of this Pietà,
I was eighteen,
a virgin.
Now I am not
interested
in the body
through
the ages of art—
I am the body.
~
I show
my month-old son
to my new colleague.
She stares fixedly
at his blond head.
Is overly polite.
The next day,
someone says,
You’re new here,
so it’s okay.
Her son killed
himself last year.
He was doing
better we all thought.
~
I am seven months
pregnant,
so big that
my brother says,
Let me open
that door for you.
Then: But after
you have that
baby you’re
on your own.
~
For the first time,
I don’t fear
other women,
their potential
cruelty. Or worse—
their desire
to be close
to me.
~
The baby is done
being fed
by his father
in the rented room
in the foreign
country I have
brought us to
for the sake
of my professional
advancement.
When the baby’s full,
he gets that
glazed, milk-
drunk look.
I can only get
any thinking done
while he is
dead dreaming.
I am told
the biological
purpose
for wakefulness
is to prepare
us for sleep.
~
The conservative
female politician
melts down
during the campaign.
Goes catatonic
with her handlers
before the debate.
Says, I miss my baby.
I need to be
with my baby—
the Downs kid,
her fifth.
~
My husband’s skin
cracks from
washing
his hands
ten times a day
after changing
the baby’s diaper.
My left breast throbs
from not feeding
the baby myself.
But I have
to write. And yes:
the room
is a cage.
~
I entertain
myself
by guessing
which parts
of me he will
come to despise.
~
The baby
is older.
There is
another baby
who is older.
I can again
afford
an interest
in history.
I sit in a chair,
reading
about Proust’s visit
to Venice
with his mother—
the fever of
their symbiosis.
You’ll never be lonely
again, someone says,
laughing. It’s when
they dream
that they
most cry out. 
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