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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
October 23, 2014
Who Is Your Mother by fernknits presents new motherhood frankly; like the real thing, it packs ineffable love and messy ickyness side by side
Featured by ShadowedAcolyte
Literature Text
There is no tired like new-mother,
rock-breasted, bleeding,
brand-new mother exhausted.
Sleep a while; please sleep a while.
I tuck your arms into soft fleece, mark the 'O'
of your tiny mouth as I do it, crook you
in one elbow. We are surely alone, and slip
into dreams, you and this woman
who is your mother, drowning together
in pillows, bed-sheets, down.
There is no fear like new-mother,
groggy, incision-pain, narcotic-haze,
frantic new-mother terror. Sleep
a while; please sleep a while.
My heart lurches -- stops -- breaks.
I jolt across the bed, scanning
your tiny face for breathing signs,
a twitch, a sigh. We are still alone
and when you move, I crook you back
into my elbow. Sleep a while.
Literature
daughters
my 5 year old daughter only wants to run
through the park, loping beside our wolf-puppy,
both lean & fierce, joyful
as she tosses her hair back
& suddenly I see my body
in hers, tireless & certain,
despite my pounding heart
& damaged limbs, I run&run&
then she gives for a moment,
tumbled full-length in the grass,
feeding the puppy from her cupped hands,
& demanding, scratch my back too!
then down her sides & over the ripples
of her ribcage, her leaping heart
& tummy, still baby-soft,
until the shadows reach us & I
must give her back, inch by inch,
a long, twirling hug
my mother will echo with sad arms,
murmuring, you look really good,
Literature
How To Raise A Borderline
Don’t recognize your child’s needs,
or at the very least see them as
secondary to your own.
Ignore your child’s tears;
tell them to buck up.
Better yet,
tell them if they don’t stop crying
you’ll give them something to cry about.
That outta teach ’em.
Weigh them down with adult demands.
Expect them to cook dinner
at nine years old
because you’ll be home late.
Force them to grow up too fast,
or don’t allow them to grow up at all
because in a child’s dependent role
is where you can control them.
Don’t be consistent,
with anything.
Change your values like you change your sex partners
Literature
My Mother's Horse
The night my mother died, the horse in the barn started singing.
Its neck bulged, veins sticking out like ropes around a hanged man's throat. The old blind eyes stared at nothing, dumbly terrified of the same.
"Shut up, you old dumb bitch," I snapped at it. It had been my mother's horse. Better than a lawnmower, cheaper than a car, she used to say. But for the last few years, it had been too sick to eat and too weak to ride or pull a cart. It just stood in its stall, swaying on its broomstick legs and heaving its eyelids up and down over its smoggy eyes. We'd been an odd trio—my mom, her horse, and me. She refused to kill it, and it h
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A response to Anne Sexton's "Her Kind." My daughter loves soft things, probably more than anything else in the world, and the first time I put her in her brand-new fleece sleep sack, her expression turned to one of delighted surprise. I will never forget that moment.
© 2013 - 2024 fernknits
Comments39
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Great writing, and I enjoyed your "artist's comment" as much as I did your poem.