ManicDDaily

Yesterday, I had the fun and honor of hosting dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, challenging people to write about undercurrents–the layers of a moment or experience.   I was not very pleased by my own poem, which I had cut hugely before posting.  I tend to think that almost all poems are a bit too long; but I worried all day that I had eviscerated it.  (Ugh.)

But the great thing about blogging is that you learn to just move on to the next thing.  So, here’s a new poem for MagPie Tales, hosted by Tess Kincaid.  The poem is based upon the Kandinsky overhead (Red Spot II).

Nursing Mother’s Trip Home

She runs, takes stairs aslant by twos,
tethered purse banging at purposeful
hip, diagonals by the commuter who
doesn’t have a nursing baby at home, weaves
around this woman with the slow high heels, that backpack
that blocks her dash, this stack
of newspapers–anything that would collapse
the pace pounding her brain; pushes
onto her next train, squeezing her newly reduced
body between limbs, suppressing inner
relief sob, pulling slash
of coat from pinch of train doors; leans for the
long part of the ride–the passage beneath
the river–against
the conductor’s silver
booth, trying now
to control her chest–the harsh
breath of hurry, the milk whose heated
seep already pushes
her nipples,
stopping only in her 1-2-3
to pray for no stoppage, no moment of
slowdown between shores when she will feel crushed
by crinkle and murk, the image of tons
of river overhead–even as she knows –she does
not need to tell herself, she knows it
so absolutely–that nothing, not even a burst
of flood through train’s fluorescence—-will keep
her from getting home.

It is only the delay that crazes
her–the time it takes from
this grey metal door to
her infant at her breast–for
she knows, yes,
in every mote of
her being she knows,
that it is only
a matter of time.

(P.S. I am also linking this to Imperfect Prose.  Have a great week. K.)