Root

Issue EightIssue Eight PoetryPoetry

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By Angela T. Carr

 

I am not born. Doctors gas my mother

and she baulks. Trees creep in, snake

the delivery room. She wanders out

of fluorescent lights into the forest fugue.

I am birthed – daughter

of amniotic hook, scissor, steel.

 

Carried off in a Hillman Imp, I’m coddled

in the crook of my father’s elbow.

He drives with one free hand, delivers me

to the arms of my godmother.

She bathes, swaddles, lullabies –

there I feed and there I sleep. Years pass.

 

My mother wakes and, drowsy, drags herself

from the bracken, her hair tangled with twigs,

dragging limpet vines. On blackened feet,

she pads a path to my crib –

hands scoop and scoop and come up empty.

Heartwood darkens at the loss of its own green sap.

 


This poem was originally published in The Lonely Crowd Issue 10 (2018).