Janelle Cordero, Fall Figure 5
Better to Waste a Womb: A Contrapuntal
Grandmother:
men are leaky faucets
or they are just gone
a night-wailing woman
chills the stillness
it’s hard to housewife
going to work
seam-split inside
a woman born to woman
Mother:
something else to fix
a child breaks the motherbody
pasting itself in place after birthache
and the cries she is unable to quiet
without a house
job after job tired
kitchen-cabinet-angry
morphs into a haunted mother hunting
Daughter:
weight carried
burrows and births
a new stain
with unmotherly hands
without help
eyes propped open
and witness to drowning
as a daughter saves herself