1.
The years become one wait
two weeks at a time.
The drugs balloon me into
what I hope to be but won’t.
Things peed out by pregnant women,
things like the hair of an asp
Puck must find for Oberon.
Every try they show us a snapshot
of the best blast, with the corona
of cells that will feed it.
It is itself
and its own nourishment
until it isn’t.
2.
Inside their blubber orcas carry
old pollutants—PCBs, flame
retardants, pesticides: the ones
with bonds that break
for no one, stick around—
though mothers have the lowest levels
because they pass them to their calves
in milk. Sunset, I walk around the park
among children,
mothers, the memory patients.
An older woman, off-kilter
but friendly, says STOP
and points up at the dark red clots.
3.
My favorite nurse at the clinic
returns from maternity leave.
We’re still here. There’s something
funny about that, right?
Does your body still feel
like a science experiment?
asks one of my only friends
who knows. There are tricks,
pangs and tucks and pings
in my abdomen, a furry feeling,
the body fucking with me.
4.
How does it feel? To hope and guard
against it like Mary and Martha
waiting up for Jesus.
Like middle-aged Elizabeth
surprised by John the Baptist
dancing within her.
You must be ready for the miracle
and the chance absorbed again,
as the petals form another year.
5.
I no longer dream I have abandoned a child,
no longer dream about children at all.
Or daydream
about names or roller skates
or just a molten heap
in my lap. Potato sack.
Or flour, the five-pound bag
we had to carry around in junior high.
I was so confident then.
I named my flour sack Aurora Chloe.
Once, in a rush, I left her in my locker.
6.
Once all I wanted
was time to make,
didn’t need a little
nudging into me
didn’t need more family—
then this rumble
late in life:
fear of death?
or just the urge
to bless someone
now that I’ve had time—
your brand-new name
(less fragile
than your body now)
inventing its own light.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 5.
Deirdre Lockwood is a Seattle-based poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Her poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere, and her journalism has been published in Scientific American, Nature, Science, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets. Lockwood has received support from the Fulbright Program, Hugo House, the Elizabeth George Foundation, Artist Trust, Marble House Project, Willapa Bay AiR, and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. She has an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington.
See all items about Deirdre Lockwood