Poetry

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 91 (March 1999): 9, 26, 32.

Bedtime and Weekly

Our toddler slices the air

with a bandaged finger,

her makeshift cross

more complete

by her young, scratched skin,

a reminder of all our “boo“boo’s”

piling up in the flesh

till we cry out

our alphabet beginnings,

Abba gurgling in the throat

we hold up weekly

for the bread and wine

that settles nightly

in our wounded souls,

cradles to sleep those childish

doubts now grown“up

in our bodies,

so immature and mortal

and hungry for the calm

clean milk of continuous

childlike prayer.

–
Marjorie Maddox

Grania at the Museum of Science and Industry

I am Grania.

I am sitting here looking at a baby in a bottle.

Its feathery hair floats in formaldehyde,

Its eyes are closed tight in an undersea nap

From which there will be no awakening.

It has everything,

All the human necessities,

Fingernails

Eyelashes

Tiny conch“like ears

Dimples and creases and a fat little belly.

It’s a great little baby,

Except that it’s dead.

Bottled rudiments, all in a row.

Flecks of humanity

Dropped from inhospitable wombs,

Cold“packed by scientists from

A bleak harvest to be placed

Like a housewife’s summer’s work

On a cellar shelf. This freak show.

Is this one mine? That one yours?

The mothers come as if to Parents’ Day at school

To wonder who is the prize of the display,

Unique in some hellish way.

By this one, I am beguiled.

Observe that plump rump.

Reminds me

Of J. Swift’s recipe

For fricassee

Of child.

In the first flush of love,

My true love gave to me

One embryo

Nestled inconveniently.

She was a girl,

With her sex tucked inward between fat little pads.

Just one of many abandoned by fun“loving dads.

By the third week,

There was a heart,

A mere pinpoint, but

Though its elfin beats are silenced,

They echo and echo,

Sending bubbles of reproach to the top of the jar.

And I hear

And hear

And I feel

Your gargantuan wrath,

but from afar.

Sorry, sweetie,

Mommie simply had to commit you to the jar.

–
Rosemary Hamilton

Comma

. . . of all that is, seen and unseen

what we see and don’t

split by the simple curve

of cursive, a pencil slip

or determined nitch

on paper. God

Almighty,

we miss epiphany

when we step

our voice too quickly

over the light lines

punctuating the Light

of all that is,

visible and invisible,

our hurried eyes

forgetting to read

what so powerfully pauses

our lives between

the meanings.

”Marjorie Maddox