Sunday, August 2, 2020

Margaret Christakos : 24 May 2020



                     -- An estimated 116 million babies will be born under the shadow
of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICEF said today --




I think          a balcony                          a porch


                                                                        a lookout station          in the green


          restive as the           breeze           set to stir                by noon


where bold                        boulders                 ladder                     climbers


          to an upper echelon                   of possible    shade


The sleep-station               is a computer                                                   squeezed


                                                   in a palm's sweat


The nap is not festive                                      a perineum             to rip


          allowing birth's                 preference    to come clear


                     through a deepblue tissue           erased into/out of                 pain


I think a       pain that                 repeats                    in every


          birthgiver's             journal                                                  all the

                                                                 narcotic


allegiances    of                                      what-i-would-have-givens


                     like someone                    traced a line in sugar                     around your


                                         right hand              left it afloat in a             pledge


to be suckled                               by hummingbirds             when everyone but you


                     leaps to sleeping               again


I think a porch                 a pain                     a sugary outline                     think


             probable    maternal       analogies                          since


                               my experience        there                      has shaped


          what this                 balcony                                       balances against


                               the brick-                wall of straining to suggest an edge


of the desperate                          which we                all scale


                                         in personal terms   not visible              to the


          popular brink at which               mothers sew         cotton masks for others


while their own                           jaws sting      in a    bare-brutal heat


                               It doesn't      matter                     how pretty the     day

          The perineum                                            stitches itself


                                         to the sides of                    glistening highrises


holding back          the automatonic                              enfoldment in a      moment's


                     sudden         stride to                  the handrail


                               A piercing look into the gaping idea               that


slides shut as                     the infant whimpers                   awake again


                               and thank god for the immaculate timing                     of being


                                         radiantly       needed


I think          a         balcony's                                                          integer of      breath


                     to wish             the cusp of hand           cupping a fontanel    


                                                                                              the pulled-taffy


tonic of a four-minute                 visit             back into the self-remembering body    
                              
                                                                       
                     slow as a         synchronous look across the               hallucinatory          city    


                                                   of       new mothering







Margaret Christakos is a poet living in Toronto, who remains attached to this earth. Her most recent collection is charger, published by Talonbooks in Spring 2020.